AT&T says employee gained unauthorized access to customer data
The worker may have obtained social security and driver's licence numbers, and information on services purchased from AT&T, the firm said in a letter
Portland: AT&T Inc. sent a letter to about 1,600 customers explaining that an employee had gained unauthorized access to their data in August.
The worker may have obtained social security numbers, driver’s licence numbers and information on services they purchased from AT&T, the letter said. The employee has since left AT&T, the company said on Monday.
The incident comes amid reports of hackers gaining access to bank accounts at JPMorgan Chase and Co. and the theft of celebrity photos from Apple Inc.’s iCloud service in August. AT&T said it will reverse any unauthorized charges that users may see, and will offer one year of free credit monitoring to affected customers. The carrier has notified federal authorities of the incident, the letter said.
“We take our customers’ privacy very seriously and value the trust they have in us," Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T, wrote in an e-mailed statement.
“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." Bloomberg
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