AT&T had a massive data breach THREE YEARS AGO

And they are just now telling you about it.

Does that make you feel better?

It certainly should not.

What does this breach mean – and are you are affected?

Number of people affected: 75 million

Compromised data:

Dates of birth, Email addresses, Government issued IDs, Names, Phone numbers, Physical addresses

Information:

In March 2024, tens of millions of records allegedly breached from AT&T were posted to a popular hacking forum. Dating back to August 2021, the data was originally posted for sale before later being freely released. AT&T maintains that there has not been a breach of their systems and that the data originated from elsewhere. The incident exposed names, email and physical addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and US social security numbers. I subscribe to Two different monitoring services that alert me when my personal information is found in the wrong places. Why do I do this? Because my identity was stolen in 2013.  I found out about it when I received a letter from the IRS in March of 2014.  The bright boy that bought my identity from a black market server in Asia thought filing a fake tax return would be the best bet.  Hoping for a fat refund check, that’s exactly what he did.  Lucky for me, the IRS was paying attention.

So what  should you do to protect yourself?

1. Use C*0MpL¡c4T3DD$- passwords.
2. If you can remember the password it is USELESS.
3. And I can crack it in minutes.
4. Use a different password for EVERY account.
5. Enable Two Factor Authentication (2FA) on every account you can.  This requires use of an authenticator app or replying to a text message to verify it is YOU logging in to your account.
6. Do NOT use the same Username for all your financial accounts.  Use unique usernames in addition to unique passwords for all financial accounts.
7. Keep all this information in a password protected SPREADSHEET.
8. Always write a password down in a spreadsheet BEFORE assigning it to your account(s).  This way you won’t forget to document it.
9. Get a Lifelock account.  It’s cheap insurance.  No one can open up an account (including you) without your authorization in response to a Lifelock alert text.
10. Have all the credit reporting agency accounts locked.  This will complicate you opening up any credit accounts, but the security it provides is well worth it. Experian, Equifax and Transunion all have online access to this feature.