CNN — NEW YORK (CNN) — AT&T has begun investigating the cause of a data breach that included the personal information of 73 million current and former customers.
The telecom giant said in a news release Saturday morning that the data was “published on the dark web approximately two weeks ago” and includes information such as account holders' Social Security numbers.
“It is not yet clear whether the data originates from AT&T or its vendor,” the company added. “At this time, AT&T has no evidence that data sets were compromised due to unauthorized access to its systems.”
The data appears to be from before 2019. AT&T said the breach does not appear to include financial information or details about call history. The company said it found that the breach affected approximately 7.6 million checking account holders and 65.4 million former account holders.
AT&T said it is contacting customers and asking them to reset their account passcodes. AT&T also added that it “will provide credit monitoring, where applicable, at our expense,” reminding customers to stay on the lookout for changes to their accounts and credit reports.
The company was alerted to the potential breach about two weeks ago. News of the leak was first posted by the X account vx-underground on March 17th.
AT&T told CNN at the time: “There is no indication that our systems were compromised. In 2021, we determined that the information provided in this online forum did not appear to originate from our systems. We believe, and are working to confirm, that the dataset discussed today is the same dataset that has been recycled many times on this forum.”
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