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Glad I got rid of AT&T about 6 years ago…

My elderly father, who was on my AT&T phone plan, died. I was month-to-month (not on a contract anymore) and requested his line be canceled. I was willing to provide a death certificate if needed. They charged me $6.67 to cancel a dead man’s phone! I asked them to waive the fee because I was a 15+ year customer and they bluntly said: “Sorry, no. That’s our policy.”

Suffice to say, I left AT&T and never looked back. They are an awful company!
 
So ATT allows customer data to be stolen in one of the biggest fraud heists of all time. ATT should be fined $50 billion for this fraud. They are solely responsible for safeguarding that data and should give their lives for protecting it.
Time for these companies to have to payout to their customers. Giving the .gov $50 billion in fines and give me some "free" credit monitoring service is crap
 
Time for these companies to have to payout to their customers. Giving the .gov $50 billion in fines and give me some "free" credit monitoring service is crap
Its hard to put a generic value on stolen data, don't think a payout to the customer would change anything. But maybe a fine if its established that they have failed to do basic security work on systems that allowed for this to happen.

With basic IT-security work i mean basic things that all of us should apply.
MFA, complex passwords, keeping things up to date and follow best practice when configuring things.
 
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Oh boy, let's find out who the members of Congress and the Supreme Court justices are communicating with. Fun!
 
So ATT allows customer data to be stolen in one of the biggest fraud heists of all time. ATT should be fined $50 billion for this fraud. They are solely responsible for safeguarding that data and should give their lives for protecting it.
Did you read the article? See what data was compromised? :rolleyes:
 
I'm wondering how long until there's a notice about a class action lawsuit against AT&T. Stuff like this can fly by regulators (like this did until they got found out). People won't stand for it, and if there's enough people that want to fight, there's always plenty of lawyers ready to take on the challenge.

"Records of Calls and Texts" is a pretty vague term! Does that mean they potentially have call records of someone talking to their bank and confirming all of their bank information? Does that mean they'd have information on someone's call to a hotel where they provided all of their Credit Card information?

Inferring that just because there's no Social Security Number information or specific account information isn't telling the whole story here. If they have access to call records and text records (And potentially Location Information!), people send a lot of stuff thru texts! And calls?? Whoa boy.
 
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So, am I correct in assuming that the contents of every text message is being stored by cellular companies for current and former customers, and that all of those will someday be stolen and become available for anyone to search? Similar to a story line in The Morning Show involving company emails
Did you read the article?

A bold assumption.
 
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it’s so amazing to watch U.S. telecom ever-so-slowly transform back into the Ma Bell system. context: grew up on AT&T b/c my father was a day-one iPhone adopter; never bothered trying to switch because, in my area, no carrier is considered “dominantly” good—AT&T and Verizon are both passable, TMo stays absolute trash; I haven’t liked AT&T for a long time and I still don’t switch because there’s no realistic benefit. consolidation has ruined any even vague attempt at competition, perhaps the apex of this in the past 10 years being TMo’s absolute 180 from the “un-carrier” marketing model to sucking up Sprint and becoming just like ATT/VZ.

patiently waiting for the day someone tries to suck up TMo themselves and things can be properly broken up again. until then, the ensh*ttification cycle continues.
 
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Its hard to put a generic value on stolen data, don't think a payout to the customer would change anything. But maybe a fine if its established that they have failed to do basic security work on systems that allowed for this to happen.

With basic IT-security work i mean basic things that all of us should apply.
MFA, complex passwords, keeping things up to date and follow best practice when configuring things.
May not can put a true value on it but $5,000-10,000 sure is a lot better than the "free" credit monitoring they offer which I'm willing to bet doesn't cost them anything.
Heck the NFL Ticket class action looks like a person will get almost $2,000
 
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Here come the "pay me $750 in bitcoin or I'll tell your wife about the texts between you and your girlfriend" scams.
My response would be “I have a wife? What does she look like? I’d like to meet her.”
 
What is AT&T’s problem? Are they using a bad cybersecurity company or are they just too cheap to pay for services that will keep our data safe?

Their stock price is up for the year, and their leadership remains in charge.

Money better spent on security is instead spent on lobbying. AT&T is glad that the fun fishing trip and campaign contribution convinced your congressman to squash any penalties.
 
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So, am I correct in assuming that the contents of every text message is being stored by cellular companies for current and former customers, and that all of those will someday be stolen and become available for anyone to search? Similar to a story line in The Morning Show involving company emails
I would just assume so. End to end encrypted messaging systems like iMessage are the only solution. And at this point, it may be more advisable to use audio-only FaceTime instead of conventional cellular calls whenever possible to limit the records that are kept by the cell carrier.
 
This is why I always have my credit reports frozen with all three companies and I put everything on my Amex gold card. Never use a debit card for anything, unless you absolutely have to. If there is ever an issue with fraud, and luckily I've only every dealt with petty fraud on my account once (knock on wood), Amex takes care of it instantly without any hassle.
I cut up my debit card years ago. Everything goes on one credit card. Good advice.
 
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Only reason we know about this is because it leaked or there was proof it happened! Otherwise AT&T would have hidden the leak from us! That is what most companies do!
 
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Our data has been stolen so often, by so many, over the years, that there is almost a bit of safety in large numbers. Are you going to be picked out of all the data to go after? LOL Regardless, changing passwords, unique passwords, etc, is all the more important. Let’s speed up adoption of passkeys, contactless payments that do not store credit card numbers on servers, etc. I’m almost numb to these reports, but this specific breach does not sound like any useful data was stolen?
 
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