Customer information breaches are never good, but when determining how serious a breach is, it’s also important to consider how old the data is when it gets up online. Furthermore, when it comes to digital security and privacy, similar missteps can teach everyone the following fundamental lesson: Regularly changing passwords is always a good idea, provided that the new passwords are sufficiently complex. Although the information is at least five years old, AT&T said yesterday that “data-specific fields were contained in a data set released on the dark web” that appeared online two weeks ago.
The aforementioned data set contains contact information, social security numbers, account numbers and passcodes for AT&T, and other sensitive data. “Approximately 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and approximately 65.4 million former account holders” were effectively targeted, according to the preliminary study carried out by internal and external experts. New passcodes were automatically provided to the affected current clients; however, the company will also be reaching out to the past consumers. It’s unclear at this time if AT&T or one of its suppliers was the source of the leak.
Ranked 13th on the Fortune 500 rankings for US companies, AT&T is also the world’s fourth-largest telecom company by revenue, as well as the largest wireless carrier in the United States. This new development hasn’t affected its performance on the stock exchange yet. After a brief period below $17 per share last month, AT&T is now trading at $17.6. According to data provided by IEX Cloud, the 52-week high and low values are $18.96 and $12.97, respectively.
