The personal data of about 73 million current and former AT&T account holders has been leaked on the dark web, the telecommunications giant announced Saturday.
The Dallas-based company said the data was published on the dark web about two weeks ago, but authorities are not yet sure whether the data came from the company or one of its vendors.
“With regard to the balance of datasets that include personal information such as social security numbers, the origin of the data is still being evaluated,” officials said in a news release.
AT&T officials said the company has begun an investigation with cybersecurity experts. In an initial analysis, staff found that the dataset appears to date back to 2019 or earlier, affecting approximately 7.6 million checking account holders and 65.4 million former account holders.
Company officials said there is currently no evidence of unauthorized access to the system.
“We are actively communicating with those affected and will provide credit monitoring, at our expense, where applicable,” the people wrote.
Those affected will receive an email or letter from the company.
AT&T officials said Saturday that the incident has not had a material impact on the company’s operations. Affected customers received an email informing them that their account passcode has been compromised and needs to be reset.
“The data appears to be more than four years old and does not include personal financial information or call history,” AT&T wrote to customers.
The company noted in the email that the information may have included customers’ names, email addresses, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, dates of birth, AT&T account numbers, and passcodes. ing.
If sensitive personal information is compromised, the company said it will provide “free identity theft and credit monitoring services.”
The dark web breach comes a month after the company suffered a one-day nationwide outage of its mobile phone service.
