AT&T
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| Basic information | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1885 |
| Legal Structure | Public |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Also known as | |
| Official website | https://att.com/ |
AT&T, Inc. is a major telecommunications holding company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. AT&T owns several smaller telecommunications companies, including Cricket Wireless and DIRECTV. [1]
Consumer impact summary
- Privacy - In 2017, the Electronic Frontier Foundation awarded AT&T with a 1 out of 5 stars privacy rating, the same as AT&T's largest competitors, Verizon and T-Mobile.[2]
Incidents
Inability to cancel setup when the option is advertised (8/16/2025)
The user is able to schedule service setup online though the portal. The option to cancel this scheduled setup is advertised to the user. The user is unable to cancel the plan due to the "Request cancellation" button being greyed out and inactive.
Selling consumer data (2024)
FCC found that all major telecommunications companies were illegally selling customer's location data. FCC fined AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon nearly $200 million; AT&T's share amounted to 0.22% of their net annual income.[Video References 1]
Massive data breach (March 2024)
In March 2024, tens of millions of records allegedly breached from AT&T were posted to a popular hacking forum.[3] Dating back to August 2021, the data was originally posted for sale before later being freely released. At the time, AT&T maintained that there had not been a breach of their systems and that the data originated from elsewhere. Twelve days later, AT&T acknowledged that data fields specific to them were in the breach and that it was not yet known whether the breach occurred at their end or that of a vendor.[4] AT&T also proceeded to reset customer account pass-codes,[5] an indicator that there was sufficient belief pass-codes had been compromised. The incident exposed names, email and physical addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and US Social Security numbers.
Products
See also
References:
- ↑ "PRINCIPAL SUBSIDIARIES OF AT&T INC". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Archived from the original on 2025-10-04.
- ↑ Reitman, Rainey (2017-07-10). "Who Has Your Back? Government Data Requests 2017". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Archived from the original on 2018-09-15.
- ↑ Hunt, Troy (2024-03-19). "Inside the Massive Alleged AT&T Data Breach". TroyHunt.com. Archived from the original on 2025-12-11.
- ↑ "AT&T Addresses Recent Data Set Released on the Dark Web". AT&T. 2024-03-30. Archived from the original on 2025-12-21.
- ↑ Whittaker, Zack (2024-03-30). "AT&T resets account passcodes after millions of customer records leak online". Tech Crunch. Archived from the original on 2025-12-23.
Video references:
- ↑ Rossman, Louis (2024-04-30). "No Escape: EVERY US Carrier Sold Your Location Data with 0.4% Penalties from the FCC!". YouTube.
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