Are You a Victim of AT&T’s Massive Cyber-Security Attack?

AT&T announced that 73 million current and former customers had their personal information compromised.  What’s worse is that it included social security numbers. Fortunately, this does not set any records. Yahoo owns the record for the largest data hack.  In 2013, hackers broke into 3 billion consumer accounts. Then, in 2014, they were hit by a second cyber security attack that involved 500 million consumer files.   

Now, just consider that there are 8 billion people worldwide (2022) and 327 million people in the United States. If you add up the top 15 biggest cyber-attacks, the number of personal files collectively compromised of the top 15 hacks exceeds 8 billion consumers. That doesn’t even include smaller hacks that affected 50 to 100 million people, and there have been many of them. 

So, what do you do? If you use AT&T, I would start with changing your passwords. Second, I would freeze all three of my credit reports so no one can use your information to open accounts. You can freeze and unfreeze your credit reports using a code that only you possess. You can do this on each site: 

www.experian.com 

www.transunion.com 

www.equifax.com  

Most importantly, I would be careful, especially with emails. This is where so many crimes start. Never give any information to someone who approaches you via phone or email or shows up at your door in person. 

The numbers are there to say we are all at risk. Be careful!   

Listen to Bob on the Prudent Money Radio show. You can stream his daily show on all major podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.