Millions of AT&T Inc. users received bad news from the third-largest US retail wireless carrier this Easter holiday weekend: Their personal data has been leaked onto the dark web.
In a press release on Saturday, the telecommunications giant said it has "determined that AT&T data-specific fields were contained in a data set released on the dark web approximately two weeks ago" and contains "personal information such as social security numbers."
"It is not yet known whether the data ... originated from AT&T or one of its vendors," the company said, adding, "Currently, AT&T does not have evidence of unauthorized access to its systems resulting in exfiltration of the data set."
The statement continued: "Based on our preliminary analysis, the data set appears to be from 2019 or earlier, impacting approximately 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and approximately 65.4 million former account holders."
According to Bloomberg data, AT&T is the third-largest US retail wireless carrier, behind Verizon Communications Inc. and T-Mobile US Inc. It's also the largest telecom company that has disclosed the theft of its customers' personal information.
In 2022, T-Mobile paid $350 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over leaked data from over 50 million customers. Then, in 2023, the cellphone carrier revealed another major breach of "basic customer information" on 37 million customers.
Of, course, in the PR world, save the bad news for a holiday weekend...
