AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) has informed individual customers whose information was obtained by unauthorized employee of the company. The alleged employ is said to have gotten access to personal information of 1,600 customers, obtaining their social security numbers, driving license numbers, and the company’s services that the individuals have subscribed to.
This development comes at a time when there has been a flurry of data breaches affecting several major companies. Just recently, information came out that America’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase, fell victim to a hack that saw information belonging to 84 million customers compromised. Other companies that have been affected in the latest round of cyber attacks and data breaches include Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corporation.
The employee who is accused of having committed the offense has since been fired.
“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,”
an AT&T spokesman said.
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) revealed information about the data breach to the customers through email and assured them that that no sensitive information had been compromised. Customers have been advised to change their account passwords.
“We do not believe that the perpetrators of this attack obtained access to your online account or any of the information contained in that account,”
the email said.
The company has also asked customers to be on the lookout for any emails requesting for their personal details. At the same time, the company is carrying out investigations to establish what could have formed the intent of the breach, which targeted less than 1% of the company’s total customers.
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) fell victim to another attack about one and a half years ago where information belonging to 120,000 customers were illegally accessed and forwarded to Gawker blog operators.
The company has already notified federal authorities of the current incident.
This article has been written by Victor Ochieng.
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