Back in 2023 a former AT&T cloud vendor got hacked and 8.9 million customers had their data exposed. AT&T has now agreed to pay a $13 million fine to close the investigation into why data which was supposed to have been erased years ago was still around.
The contract between AT&T and the vendor had come to an end years before the data breach. Thankfully, the vendor didn’t hold extremely sensitive data like passwords, social security numbers or credit card information. Instead, most of the data that was exposed was about the customers’ accounts, including things like their bill balance.
The FCC’s charges levied against AT&T included failure to uphold the terms of their contract with the vendor regarding disposal of customer data. This data was supposed to have been gotten rid of back in 2017 yet it was found by hackers six years later.
With the $13 million fine AT&T has “resolved” the investigation into why this had been possible. The FCC claims that the changes AT&T has been addressed to make will cost the company more than the fine it has paid. These changes include stricter oversight of contracted vendors to ensure a similar incident doesn’t take place again.
Your data is valuable. | Image credit — PhoneArena
This is just one of the multiple occasions AT&T has been let off with a slap on the wrist. In April of this year the carrier was fined $57 million by the FCC for sharing location data of its customers without consent. That sharing of data probably earned AT&T a pretty penny, and the fine was just the “cost of doing business”.
The FCC is also currently investigating another AT&T data breach that occurred in April, the same time as the aforementioned $57 million fine. This data breach resulted in the call and text data of 109 million accounts being downloaded from AT&T’s servers. The carrier only told the FCC about this breach in July, almost three months later.
I don’t think I need to say this but, unless actual action is taken against these companies expect your data to remain a pawn in multi-billion Dollar chess.
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Abdullah loves smartphones, Virtual Reality, and audio gear. Though he covers a wide range of news his favorite is always when he gets to talk about the newest VR venture or when Apple sets the industry ablaze with another phenomenal release.
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