AT&T has agreed to pay $13 million to the 8.9 million customers affected by a data breach in January last year.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced Tuesday that the fine will resolve its investigation into last year’s data breach by a cloud provider.
The company began notifying customers if they were affected in March 2023, in accordance with FCC requirements.
AT&T suffered a major data breach in January 2023. The company will now pay $13 million to affected customers
In response to the fine, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said: Reuters that “operators have a duty to protect the privacy and security of consumers’ data, and that responsibility takes on new meaning in the face of data breaches in the digital age.”
According to the FCC, the data breach exposed customer data from 2015 to 2017, and it explained that the information should have been deleted from the cloud in 2017 or 2018.
While credit card information, Social Security numbers or account information for AT&T customers was not available, the company and the FCC said the exposed data included how many lines were on the account, the bill balance and information about their rate plans.
The agency also confirmed that AT&T will take steps to increase its security measures to protect customer data and prevent future data breaches.
“Protecting our customers’ data remains one of our top priorities,” an AT&T spokesperson told DailyMail.com.
“A vendor we previously used experienced a security incident last year that exposed data belonging to some of our wireless customers,” they continued.
‘While our systems were not compromised in this incident, we are making improvements to how we manage customer information internally, as well as implementing new requirements in our vendors’ data management practices.’
DailyMail.com has contacted AT&T and the FCC for comment.