A couple of weeks ago there was a huge phone service outage that affected multiple service providers but none were more affected than AT&T. Almost 100,000 customers here in the US reported having issues with their service and some reported not being able to contact emergency dispatch either. This was dismissed in the very beginning as an error with a system they were trying to implement and many people weren't buying it.

While some people were soothed by the reasoning given by AT&T officials, others were trying to find out if anything was occurring behind the scenes. AT&T was doing their investigation and trying to keep things under wraps, but now just a few weeks later, they have come out to announce bad news. The outage they had a couple of weeks ago may have occurred due to the implementation of a new system but a much larger issue has come in the aftermath of that situation, which is affecting millions in America and thousands here in Michigan.

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Those AT&T customers who were affected by the outage remember that day better than the rest of us but now whether you had service that day or not, if you use AT&T for any services you will want to know this. There was a data breach and leak around the time of that outage, which has placed millions of people in danger as some of their data has been accessed by an unauthorized party.

This data breach affects more than just current customers as some former account holders's information was also leaked during the breach. AT&T was first tipped off to the breach a few weeks ago but said

"We have no indications of a compromise of our systems. We determined in 2021 that the information offered on this online forum did not appear to have come from our systems. We believe and are working to confirm that the data set discussed today is the same dataset that has been recycled several times on this forum.”

What Was Leaked?

“It is not yet known whether the data originated from AT&T or one of its vendors. Currently, AT&T does not have evidence of unauthorized access to its systems resulting in exfiltration of the data set.”The data seems to have been from 2019 or earlier. The leak does not appear to contain financial information or specifics about call history but does show approximately 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders were affected.

AT&T said it is reaching out to customers and asking them to reset their account passcodes. It is also urging customers to remain alert about changes to their accounts or credit reports, adding AT&T “will be offering credit monitoring at our expense where applicable.” If you haven't reset you account or want to know more about the breach and what is going on with your account or AT&T as a whole, reach out to them directly.

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