(TheRedAlertNews.com) – Millions of Americans now face various potential threats after the personal data of current and former clients of AT&T has been leaked on the dark web.
The significant breach of privacy, which affects 73 million Americans, includes sensitive information like Social Security numbers.
This incident triggered a comprehensive inquiry, bolstered by the expertise of both internal and external cybersecurity professionals, AT&T announced on Saturday, as cited by The New York Post.
The exposed data, dating back to 2019 or before, encompasses details of approximately 7.6 million existing customers and 65.4 million individuals who previously used AT&T’s services.
The information at risk of exposure includes customers’ names, email and physical addresses, telephone numbers, Social Security numbers, birth dates, AT&T account numbers, and passcodes.
The origin of the compromised data—whether directly from AT&T or through one of its vendors—remains uncertain.
“It is not yet known whether the data in those fields originated from AT&T or one of its vendors,” the company said.
It also noted the absence of evidence pointing to a breach of AT&T’s own systems as the source of the leak.
The company declared that following a notification from TechCrunch regarding the discovery of a vast amount of customer data on the dark web, it took immediate action to secure its customers’ accounts, including resetting passwords for those impacted.
AT&T also announced that it has begun notifying affected individuals about the specific details that were leaked and is providing complimentary services for identity theft protection and credit monitoring.
This data leak incident occurred on the heels of a significant service disruption last month, affecting millions of AT&T customers across the nation.
This outage, which resulted in service interruptions lasting up to 12 hours for some customers, was attributed by the company to a flawed software update.
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