AT&T, America’s biggest mobile service provider has confirmed that the company has experienced a breach of its customer information. The breach includes essential information like the customers’ social security number and call logs. The breach was reportedly performed by some of the employees of its carrier, to obtain unlock codes for cell phones.
Talking to ITWorld, AT&T Revealed:
“Employees of one of our service providers violated our strict privacy and security guidelines by accessing your account without authorization,” the company said in a letter to affected customers. “AT&T believes the employees accessed your account as part of an effort to request codes from AT&T than are used to unlock AT&T mobile phones in the secondary mobile phone market.”
The leak is considered to be yet another black mark for AT&T. The company has experienced leaks before, but the information about the leak is coming out only now. The leak has happened between April 9th to 21st this year.
AT&T refused to reveal the number of customers affected by this leak. Talking more about this leak, AT&T revealed:
“We recently learned that three employees of one of our vendors accessed some AT&T customer accounts without proper authorization. This is completely counter to the way we require our vendors to conduct business. We know our customers count on us and those who support our business to act with integrity and trust, and we take that very seriously. We have taken steps to help prevent this from happening again, we are notifying affected customers, and we have reported this matter to law enforcement.”
Unlocking cell phones is a really hot business in the US, and this is just another example of how desperate people are to make a mark in this grey market business. We are trying to get more details about this, and we will keep you posted about the information.
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