I've always been amused at people who put tape on their webcams but walk around with a mobile broadband enabled multi-camera equipped GNSS tracking device with gigabit memory - that they store their banking information and all of their account passwords on. It's not 'hacking' in classical sense. Bad actors just have to listen in....... Our cousins, the Brits would call it an 'own goal.' The AT&T breach appears (at this time) to just be a case if a breach in data security that went unexploited - probably because the data (metadata) wasn't worth scraping. You still have to report it - and there will still be an investigation - and what are you gonna do? Switch to Verizon? TM? They're AT&T's biggest customers and AT&T is their biggest. People get into knock-down drag-out fights about the difference between the DNC and the RNC when there days - there's not that much of a difference.
Feds have again been called in to AT&T FBI investigates massive hack affecting AT&T cellular customers (nbcnews.com) AT&T Says New Hack Includes Records of Customer Calls, Texts - Bloomberg "AT&T Data Hack Prompts FCC Probe, Raises Broad Security Concerns"
When I was in the Marines, our unit operated the Marine Corps, IBM mainframe. Of all the jobs, "bursting and binding" were the team that separated the multipart reports with carbon paper and bound them into reports. Old and thankfully gone tech. A rotten job, a lot of dirty manual labor. They also corrected Hollerith cards that could not pass through the reader. A newly, re-enlisted, Staff Sargent showed up and he was assigned to the best job of his life, supervising "bursting and binding." But he had no tolerance from carbon stained utilities. Then one day, a card with the Staff Sargent's identification accidentally was fed into the AWOL card deck. Nothing happens for 30 days before it is upgraded to deserter. Then a report goes to the local FBI office. This is not the task given to TV FBI Inspectors but the FBI version of 'Bernie Fife.' On a Friday the Staff Sargent was home mowing the lawn, the FBI agents showed up. It was the weekend and the company admin office was close and the duty Officer of the Day didn't know the Staff Sargent from Adam. So he got to spend the weekend in the monkey bar hotel. You know, he was a better Staff Sargent afterwards. Bob Wilson
Hacker Says AT&T (T) Paid About $400,000 to Erase Sensitive Data - Bloomberg AT&T reportedly paid hacker $370,000 to delete stolen customer data (msn.com) "Even so, it seems as though AT&T has been having a tough time keeping its data secure even without Snowflake's help. An unrelated leak in March exposed data belonging to approximately 73 million current and former AT&T customers, including Social Security numbers and encrypted passwords."
our daughter works for a data security company. they were recently hacked when an it employee opened an unknown email instead of following company procedure.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/new-class-action-lawsuit-accuses-at-t-of-negligence-unjust-enrichment-after-data-breach/ar-BB1q9FnF?OCID=ansmsnnews11 "The suit alleges that AT&T was not transparent with the severity of the breach, did not safeguard important data from malicious parties and earned “unjust enrichment” from customers after failing to protect their information."
on one hand, i hope at&t pays the price and learns from the experience. on the other, i own stock. i'd love to get out, but it's worth half what i got it for, and i've been hoping it would come back for the last 4 or 5 years.
I knew a bunch of guys at Lucent that used the same strategery....... I can be (and have been) sodomized by my Labour Union but some I own no individual shares of my beloved company my retirement is as safe as....... ....well everybody else's is these days.
yeah, i've gone down with the ship more than once. it's hard to know at what point the pumps can't keep up with the incoming water. at&t, like many companies, has had some bad leadership over the years. i do like their dividend, which i realize is trying to keep people from bailing
one thing that bothered me. when we called to get the number transferred to visible, they offered us a ten dollar discount on the $60./mo. we'd been paying for limited data and poor rollover structure. i guess that's how you treat long time customers who have always paid their bill.
Do note that the "old AT&T" you may remember from the 19th and 20th Centuries, is long dead and gone. The company now using the the AT&T brand name is only about forty years old, was known as Southwestern Bell Corporation for the first half of its existence, and purchased the AT&T name in 2005. I'm more bothered to learn that some people somehow believe that it is the government that gives us credit scores. Fact check: Your credit score doesn't come from the government "The claim: The government gives you your credit score A meme about credit scores first shared in March [2022] is making the rounds again on Facebook. The meme uses a well-known template of a man in a Spiderman costume standing in front of a white projector screen. Text over the screen says, "The people who are 30 trillion in debt are giving you a credit score." The March 22 post containing the meme has been shared more than 800 times in six weeks. The "people who are 30 trillion in debt" presumably refers to the United States government. In February, the Treasury Department announced that the country's debt had surpassed $30 trillion for the first time, according to Forbes. While the debt figure is correct, the government doesn't issue credit scores. Instead, scores come mostly from three major credit reporting agencies: Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. While these agencies are highly regulated, all three are private companies and are not part of the government. ..."
$30 trillion - that's so yesterday 1980 & the 'dread' of thinking the national debt was approaching a single trillion after a century of borrowing more or less - over scores and scores of years. Jumping from 1980 to 1990 - 10 short years & we stacked trillions more. The graph of debt looks like a hockey stick. Eventually the climbing graph becomes infinite - before the rubber band breaks. .
... as noted in my post, that was a couple years ago, not today. World War II was the huge jump before I was born. Borrowing to finance the war efforts. A bit of it was paid down under Truman after WWII, and a bit more paid down under Eisenhower after the Korean War. Then ... Thank you Ronald Reagan, for starting this supercharged non-wartime borrow-and-spend pattern. At first it was just a GOP thing, but now everyone does it.