In 2023 I first 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.  Now names, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and Social Security numbers of 73 million AT&T customers is 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

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.

As of today multiple class action lawsuits have been filed against AT&T for failure to implement reasonable cybersecurity procedures and protocols necessary to protect customers’ personal information from predictable cyberattacks.  As more information becomes available about these class actions, I will inform you here on Scamicide.

Meanwhile, we are left with the question as to 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.

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