After massive AT&T data breach, can users do anything?
Every day, it seems there's another breach – unauthorized access and vulnerability to your personal or financial information. The latest: AT&T's data breach, which exposed nearly all of its cellular customers' call and text message records. It seems many of us have even become a bit numb to hearing about them, barely even opening the routine emails and letters that come offering a year of free identity protection. But don't tune it out.
This particular breach is more of a worry for national security, and not necessarily for consumers in their day-to-day lives, two experts said. Still, the incident is a good reminder for consumers to be proactive in protecting themselves from fake or spoofed phone or text messages, which could lead to scams, the experts said.
What happened in the AT&T breach?
The telecom giant on Friday said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission it learned in April that customer data was illegally downloaded "from our workspace on a third-party cloud platform."
According to the company, the compromised data includes files containing AT&T records of all calls and texts of nearly all of AT&T's cellular customers and AT&T landline customers who interacted with those cellular numbers between May 1, 2022 and Oct. 31, 2022. The compromised data also includes records from Jan. 2, 2023, for a"very small number of customers."
"The data does not contain the content of the calls or texts, or personal information such as Social Security numbers, dates of birth, or other personally identifiable information," the news release said. It also does not include details such as a time stamp, the company said.
The company said at this time, it did not believe the breached data is publicly available. However, the company said that while the compromised data did not include customer names, there are ways of using publicly available tools to find a name associated with a specific telephone number.
What should a consumer do after this breach?
Consumers do not need to do anything due to this particular breach because it did not have to do specifically with consumer information, Chris Pierson, CEO of BlackCloak, an Orlando, Florida-based cybersecurity firm, told USA TODAY.
"This is a nation state intelligence issue," said Pierson. The group that has the most to lose with this breach are intelligence agents whose identities could potentially be exposed or linked based on phone records, he said.
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The breached AT&T data has not shown up "in the wild" or sold on any identity marketplace yet, which is a good thing, but also could be a telltale sign that the breach was by another nation state, said James. E. Lee, chief operating officer for the San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center.
"Whoever bought this information from or accessed this information is not selling it. They intend on using it," Lee told USA TODAY. "It could show up later, after they're done with it, but for right now, it's not the usual telltale locations of somebody who's using this to make money," he said.
This breach is the latest news of compromised data and is a reminder to consumers to be proactive about interactions on your phone and online, said Lee. Be wary of messages or calls that come from unknown numbers and cybercriminals can fake or spoof real numbers to trick consumers, too, he said.
The AT&T news also comes on the heels of news that 10 billion passwords were leaked on a hacking site. Consumers have been urged to change their passwords, not to use the same passwords on multiple sites and to utilize multi-factor authentication tools.
Betty Lin-Fisher is a consumer reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] or follow her on X, Facebook or Instagram @blinfisher. Sign up for our free The Daily Money newsletter, which will include consumer news on Fridays,here.