AT&T and its Users: Evergreen Advice on Missing Personal Information, Phishing, Social Security, and Other Identifiable Information
AT&T says the data does not include the substance or time stamps of those calls and texts, nor birthdays, social security numbers or other “personally identifiable information.” Though there is a catch.
The downloaded data doesn’t include any of the calls or texts. It has no time stamps for the calls or texts. It also doesn’t have any details such as Social Security numbers, dates of birth, or other personally identifiable information.
There are ways to find a name associated with a phone number using publicly available online tools, even if the data does not include customer names.
The Dallas-based telecommunications company announced the massive data breach in a regulatory filing and press release on Friday morning, which said it believes the data is no longer publicly available.
The US Justice Department decided in May and June that a delay in providing public disclosure was necessary due to the incident being discovered in April.
The records identify other telephone numbers with which affected customers interacted, including AT&T landline numbers, as well as counts of those calls and texts and the total call durations for specific days or months.
The company says it will notify impacted users by text, email or U.S. mail, and has also set up a webpage where current and former customers can check to see if their information was involved.
And for those concerned about potential phishing and online fraud, it offers some evergreen advice, including not replying to a text from an unknown sender with personal details and making sure websites are secure by looking for the “s” after “http” in the address.
Customers who think that a text is suspicious should forward it to AT&T and report it to the team.
On the discovery of Dark Web password changes, a source of anonymous data on the dark web and its impact on public perception of username change and password change
It disclosed in March that it had changed the passwords for about 7.6 million users after discovering a trove of data on 70 million people on the dark web.
