A year ago I told you that AT&T notified nine million of its customers that some of their personal information was exposed when a marketing partner of AT&T was hacked. A few days ago I told you that names, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and Social Security numbers of 70 million AT&T customers are being offered for free to cybercriminals on the Dark Web, that part of the Internet where criminals buy and sell goods and services. The data breach affects customers prior to August of 2021 and like the AT&T data breach I told you about last year, AT&T is telling its customers that its own computers were not hacked although they are not indicating from where the data was stolen.
Now AT&T has just announced that it is resetting the passwords of 7.6 million customers most affected by the data breach. It is also directing those customers to a site with details about how to reset their passwords to passwords of their own choosing. AT&T has also indicated that it is reaching out to people whose sensitive personal information had been compromised and offering free credit monitoring.
As I have reminded you many times, we are only as safe and secure as the security of the companies, government agencies and websites that have our personal information. Even if you are extremely diligent in protecting your personal information, you can be in danger of identity theft and scams if your personal information falls into the hands of hackers.
So what can you do to protect yourself from these data breaches that will be occurring?
TIPS
One important lesson is to limit the amount of personal information that you provide to companies and websites whenever possible. For example, your doctor doesn’t need your Social Security number for his or her records.
You should make sure that you have a unique password for each of your online accounts so that if one of your passwords is compromised in a data breach, all of your accounts will not be in danger. If your information is compromised in a data breach, you should immediately change the password for that account.
If you have not already done so, set up dual factor authentication for each of you accounts where it is available. This will protect you from having those accounts stolen by someone who may have access to your password.
https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html
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#at&Tdata breach #creditfreeze #dualfactorauthentication