A data breach at AT&T in January exposed more than nine million customers’ private information.
“A vendor that we use for marketing experienced a security incident,” AT&T wrote in an email to The Dallas Express. “Customer Proprietary Network Information from some wireless accounts was exposed, such as the number of lines on an account or [the] wireless rate plan. The information did not contain credit card information, Social Security Number, account passwords or other sensitive personal information. We are notifying affected customers.”
The representative said the data that was exposed was several years old and was mostly associated with device upgrade eligibility.
AT&T also said the vulnerability has since been fixed and that none of its systems were compromised as a result.
In the wake of the breach, you might be wondering, “How can I protect myself?”
AT&T told Fox News that customers who make a CPNI Restriction Request reduce the risk of their data being exposed if the company were to use their data for third-party marketing purposes.
Otherwise, a good antivirus program is a sound strategy to ensure you can protect yourself from having your data exposed in a breach. It also has the dual function of protecting you from phishing emails and other types of scams.
Identity theft protection is another step you can take to protect yourself from data breaches. Some plans even tell you when your information is being sold on the deep web.
Two-step authentication adds another level of security, as well as having strong passwords and not reusing them.
It should be noted that data breaches are very common. Hackers usually take advantage of vulnerabilities in software or weaknesses in the passwords of company employees.
There have been numerous breaches in 2022, including Microsoft, the Red Cross, and even News Corp, according to ERM Protect.