AT&T Reveals Customer Data Breach Caused By Former Employee

AT&T has begun sending letters to 1,600 customers regarding a data breach in August that exposed highly sensitive personal information such as state ID/driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers and account information that revealed what customers were paying for in terms of products and services. In a media statement, AT&T representatives stated the following:

“Unfortunately, we recently learned that one of our employees did not follow our strict privacy rules and inappropriately obtained some customer information. This individual no longer works at AT&T and we are directly contacting the limited number of affected customers”

Because of the breach, AT&T will be offering those customers complimentary identity theft protection and will be making more changes to avoid another breach in the future. With the increase in such incidents over the past few weeks affecting financial institutions, telecom companies are now the latest to suffer such problems.