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    AT&T Passcodes for Millions Are Reset After Leak of Customer Records

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    Nearly eight million customers and 65.4 million former account holders were affected by the data breach, the company said.The telecommunications giant AT&T announced on Saturday that it had reset the passcodes of 7.6 million customers after it determined that compromised customer data was “released on the dark web.”“Our internal teams are working with external cybersecurity experts to analyze the situation,” AT&T said. “To the best of our knowledge, the compromised data appears to be from 2019 or earlier and does not contain personal financial information or call history.”The company said that “information varied by customer and account,” but that it may have included a person’s full name, email address, mailing address, phone number, Social Security number, date of birth, AT&T account number and passcode.In addition to those 7.6 million customers, 65.4 million former account holders were also affected.The company said it would be “reaching out to individuals with compromised sensitive personal information separately and offering complimentary identity theft and credit monitoring services.”AT&T said it reset the passcodes for those affected and directed customers to a site with details about how to reset them. It also said that it was starting a “robust investigation supported by internal and external cybersecurity experts.”A company representative did not address specific questions about how the breach happened or why it went unnoticed for so long.TechCrunch, which first reported on the passcode reset, said it informed AT&T on Monday that “the leaked data contained encrypted passcodes that could be used to access AT&T customer accounts.”TechCrunch said it delayed publishing its article until the company “could begin resetting customer account passcodes.”In its report, TechCrunch said that “this is the first time that AT&T has acknowledged that the leaked data belongs to its customers, some three years after a hacker claimed the theft of 73 million AT&T customer records.”AT&T had previously denied a breach of its systems but how the leak happened was unclear, TechCrunch reported.AT&T said that it did not know whether the leaked data “originated from AT&T or one of its vendors” and that it “does not have evidence of unauthorized access to its systems resulting in theft of the data set.”The episode comes after AT&T customers experienced a widespread outage last month that temporarily cut off connections for users across the United States for several hours. The Feb. 22 outage affected customer in cities including Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York.At its peak, there were around 70,000 reports of disrupted service for the wireless carrier, according to Downdetector.com, which tracks user reports of telecommunication and internet disruptions.A few days later, AT&T offered customers affected by the outage a $5 credit in an effort to “make it right.” More

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      Landline Users Remain Proudly ‘Old-Fashioned’ in the Digital Age

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      When millions of AT&T customers across the country briefly lost their cellphone service last month, Francella Jackson, 61, of Fairview Heights, Ill., said she picked up her well-worn Southwestern Bell push-button landline phone and called her friends “just so we could laugh at the people who could not use their phones.”“Why, isn’t it great that we can talk and have a great conversation?” she recalled saying. “We had a good laugh.”Derek Shaw, 68, of York, Pa., said he has an Android mobile phone, but prefers talking on his black cordless landline at home. The sound quality is better, he said, and the phone is easier to hold during long conversations. Mr. Shaw said that he also likes talking to people face to face rather than on Zoom and never got rid of his vinyl record collection when CDs got hot in the 1990s.“I’ve never even thought about giving up my landline,” he said. “I’ll go kicking and screaming when I have to.”The fashion designer Adrienne Vittadini in 1984.Susan Wood/Getty ImagesTo many, landline phones have come to seem as essential as steamships and telegrams in the smartphone era. But to those who still use them, they offer distinct advantages. Prompted by the AT&T outage on Feb. 22 and a push by AT&T to phase out traditional landlines in California, those who have them are speaking out in defense of their old phones.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      AT&T Offers $5 Credit After Widespread Service Outage

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      Thousands of customers lost service on Thursday when the telecommunications company ran into problems while trying to expand its network, the company’s chief executive said.AT&T will offer a $5 credit to customers affected by a widespread outage on Thursday that was caused by technical issues the company encountered while trying to expand its network, its chief executive said on Sunday.The outage, which started around 3:30 a.m. Eastern time, temporarily cut off connections for users across the United States.Some of the affected cities included Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York, according to Downdetector.com, which tracks user reports of telecommunication and internet disruptions.At its peak, the site had received about 70,000 reports of disrupted service for AT&T. Service was fully restored after about seven hours.“No matter the timing, one thing is clear — we let down many of our customers, including many of you and your families,” the chief executive of AT&T, John T. Stankey, wrote in a letter dated Sunday. “For that, we apologize.”In an effort to “make it right” AT&T is offering customers a $5 credit on their AT&T Wireless account, according to the company’s website.“For the portion of consumer and small business customers most impacted by the outage, we are automatically applying an account credit to compensate them for the inconvenience they experienced,” the company said.It will take one to two billing cycles for the credit to appear, depending on when a customer’s bill closes, the company said.Prepaid customers will have options available if they were affected, Mr. Stankey wrote, but did not specifically identify those options.AT&T also said it was “working closely” with Mid-Market and Enterprise customers, which are internet plans for businesses, to address their concerns.It was not immediately clear how much the credits would amount to in lost revenue. A company representative could not be reached on Sunday.In a statement, AT&T emphasized that the outage wasn’t caused by a cyberattack.“Our initial review of the cause of Thursday’s outage indicates it was due to the application and execution of an incorrect process used while working to expand our network,” Mr. Stankey wrote in his letter.The credit is meant to refund customers for the day that the service was lost, he wrote.“I believe that crediting those customers for essentially a full day of service is the right thing to do,” Mr. Stankey wrote. More

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      Congressional Committee Presses Cable Providers on Election Fraud Claims

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCongressional Committee Presses Cable Providers on Election Fraud ClaimsBefore a hearing scheduled for Wednesday, Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee asked cable companies what they did to combat “the spread of misinformation.”President Trump’s supporters approach the Capitol on Jan. 6.Credit…Kenny Holston for The New York TimesFeb. 22, 2021, 9:14 a.m. ETThree months ago, federal lawmakers grilled Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief, about the misinformation that had appeared on their platforms. Now, a congressional committee has scheduled a hearing to focus on the role of companies that provide cable television service in the spread of falsehoods concerning the 2020 election.In advance of the Wednesday hearing, called “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media,” members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter on Monday to Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox and Altice, asking about their role in “the spread of dangerous misinformation.”The committee members also sent the letter to Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google and Hulu, digital companies that distribute cable programming.The scrutiny of cable providers took on new urgency after supporters of former President Donald J. Trump, who repeatedly promoted the debunked claim that the election was rigged, stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.“To our knowledge, the cable, satellite and over-the-top companies that disseminate these media outlets to American viewers have done nothing in response to the misinformation aired by these outlets,” two Democratic representatives from California, Anna G. Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times.None of the companies to which the letter was sent immediately replied to requests for comment.Newsmax, a right-wing cable channel carried by AT&T, CenturyLink, Charter, Comcast, Dish and Verizon, had a surge in ratings in November because of programs that embraced the former president’s claims of voter fraud. One America News Network, a right-wing outlet carried by AT&T, CenturyLink and Verizon, also promoted the false theory.Fox News, the most-watched cable news network, which is available from all major carriers, was one of five defendants in a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed this month by the election technology company Smartmatic. In the suit, the company accused Fox News, its parent company Fox Corporation, three Fox anchors and two frequent Fox guests of promoting false claims about the election and Smartmatic’s role in it. (Fox has denied the claims and filed a motion to dismiss the suit.)Congress can raise the issue of whether cable providers bear responsibility for the programs they deliver to millions of Americans, but it may have no way to force them to drop networks that have spread misinformation. And unlike broadcast stations, cable channels do not have licenses that are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission.The lawmakers’ letter asks the companies, “What steps did you take prior to, on, and following the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks to monitor, respond to, and reduce the spread of disinformation, including encouragement or incitement of violence by channels your company disseminates to millions of Americans?”“Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, OANN, and Newsmax on your platform both now and beyond the renewal date?” the letter continues. “If so, why?”Blair Levin, who served as the F.C.C.’s chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, said a hearing could be a first step toward meaningful action. “You have to establish a factual record that on both the election and Covid, tens of millions of Americans believe things that are just factually not true, and then try to figure out: ‘What are the appropriate roles for the government in changing that dynamic?’” Mr. Levin said.Harold Feld, the senior vice president at Public Knowledge, a nonprofit group focused on telecommunications and digital rights, suggested that legislators might not have easy options to exert influence over Fox, Newsmax or OAN.“You have a lot of people who are very angry about it, you have a lot of people who want to show that they’re very angry about it, but you don’t have a lot of good ideas yet about what you ought to be doing about it,” he said.For now, defamation lawsuits filed by private companies have taken the lead in the fight against disinformation promoted on some cable channels.Last month, Dominion Voting Systems, another election technology company that has figured prominently in conspiracy theories about the 2020 vote, sued two of Mr. Trump’s legal representatives, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, in separate lawsuits, each seeking more than $1 billion in damages. Both appeared as guests on Fox News, Fox Business, Newsmax and OAN in the weeks after the election.On Monday, Dominion sued Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, alleging that he defamed Dominion with baseless claims of election fraud involving its voting machines.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More