AT&T has agreed to pay $13 million in damages to the 8.9 million customers affected by a data breach last January.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced Tuesday that the fine marks the end of its investigation into last year’s data breach at 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 is now paying $13 million to affected customers
The data breach exposed customer data from 2015 through 2017. The FCC said the information should have been removed from the cloud in 2017 or 2018.
While AT&T customers’ credit card information, Social Security numbers and billing information were exposed, the company and the FCC said the exposed data included the number of lines on their account, their account balance and information about their rate plans.
In response to the fine, FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said Reuters that ‘providers have a duty to protect the privacy and security of consumer data, and that responsibility takes on new meaning in the digital age of data breaches.’
The agency also confirmed that AT&T will take steps to enhance security measures to protect customers’ data and prevent future breaches.
“Protecting our customers’ data remains one of our top priorities,” an AT&T spokesperson told DailyMail.com.
“A vendor we previously worked with experienced a security incident last year that exposed data from some of our wireless customers,” they continued.
“While our systems were not compromised in this incident, we are improving the way we handle customer data internally and implementing new requirements for our vendors’ data management practices.”
DailyMail.com has reached out to the FCC for comment.