AT&T Unofficial Lemmy Community

AT&T agreed to pay a $13 million fine because it gave customer bill information to a vendor in order to create personalized videos, then allegedly failed to ensure that the vendor destroyed the data when it was no longer needed. In addition to the fine, AT&T agreed in a consent decree announced today by the Federal Communications Commission to stricter controls on sharing data with vendors.

In January 2023, years after the data was supposed to be destroyed, the vendor suffered a breach "when threat actors accessed the vendor's cloud environment and ultimately exfiltrated AT&T customer information," the FCC said. Information related to 8.9 million AT&T wireless customers was exposed.

Phone companies are required by law to protect customer information, and AT&T should not have merely relied on third-party firms' assurances that they destroyed data when it was no longer needed, the FCC said.

The data of nearly all customers of the telecommunications giant AT&T was downloaded to a third-party platform in a security breach, the company said Friday...

Approximately 109 million customer accounts were impacted, according to AT&T, which said that it currently doesn’t believe that the data is publicly available.

“The data does not contain the content of calls or texts, personal information such as Social Security numbers, dates of birth, or other personally identifiable information,” AT&T said Friday.

The compromised data also doesn’t include some information typically seen in usage details, such as the time stamp of calls or texts, the company said, or customer names. AT&T, however, said that there are often ways using publicly available online tools to find the name associated with a specific telephone number...

AT&T identified the third-party platform as Snowflake and said that the incident was limited to an AT&T workspace on that cloud company’s platform and did not impact its network.

Relevant Portion:

With both industry leaders – AT&T and Verizon – on board, AST SpaceMobile is now uniquely positioned to achieve a groundbreaking feat: target 100% geographical coverage throughout the continental U.S., the most valuable wireless market in the world.

The key to unlocking this ubiquitous coverage lies in the power of the premium 850 MHz low-band spectrum, which offers superior signal penetration in the low band cellular range. AT&T and Verizon together will share with AST SpaceMobile a portion of their respective bands of 850 MHz low-band spectrum to enable nationwide satellite coverage.

AT&T is imposing $10 and $20 monthly price hikes on users of older unlimited wireless plans starting in August 2024, the company announced. The single-line price of these 10 "retired" plans will increase by $10 per month, while customers with multiple lines on a plan will be hit with a total monthly increase of $20.

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The $10 and $20 price increases "affect most of our older unlimited plans," AT&T said. The list of affected plans is as follows:

    AT&T Unlimited & More Premium
    AT&T Unlimited Choice Enhanced
    AT&T Unlimited & More
    AT&T Unlimited Choice II
    AT&T Unlimited Plus
    AT&T Unlimited Choice
    AT&T Unlimited Plan
    AT&T Unlimited Plus Enhanced
    AT&T Unlimited Value Plan
    AT&T Unlimited Plan (with TV)

The US government has provided more detail on how a former AT&T executive allegedly bribed a powerful state lawmaker's ally in order to obtain legislation favorable to AT&T's business.

Former AT&T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza is set to go on trial in September 2024 after being indicted on charges of conspiracy to unlawfully influence then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. AT&T itself agreed to pay a $23 million fine in October 2022 in connection with the alleged illegal influence campaign and said it was "committed to ensuring that this never happens again."

US government prosecutors offered a preview of their case against La Schiazza in a filing on Friday in US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. A contract lobbyist hired by AT&T "is expected to testify that AT&T successfully passed two major pieces of legislation after the company started making payments to Individual FR-1."

The Madigan ally referred to in the court document as "Individual FR-1" is former state Rep. Edward Acevedo, a Chicago Tribune article notes. Acevedo, who was Madigan's assistant majority leader in the Illinois House before retiring in 2017, was sentenced to six months in prison for tax evasion in 2022. Madigan left his House speaker post in 2021.

AT&T doesn't charge users extra to access its fastest 5G networks, but it soon may charge more to let people get priority access to its network during busier times. In an app update published in the iOS App Store on Monday, the company detailed a new add-on feature called "Turbo."

While the add-on did not appear accessible inside the updated app, a description alongside the update says that you can add "AT&T Turbo" to a line on your account which will "provide uninterrupted network speeds during peak traffic times." In short, pay more for better access to AT&T's network when it's busy.

A temporary network disruption that affected AT&T customers in the U.S. Thursday was caused by a software update, the company said.

AT&T told ABC News in a statement ABC News that the outage was not a cyberattack but caused by "the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network."

"We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve," the statement continued.

The software update went wrong, according to preliminary information from two sources familiar with the situation.

Sources have told ABC News that there was nothing nefarious or malicious about the incident.

The outage was not caused by an external actor, according to a source familiar with the situation. AT&T performs updates regularly, according to the source.

Hey folks, I've been trying out AT&T Postpaid. Prior to joining, it was a real paid to estimate what the taxes and fees would be. Well, now that I have that information from my bill, I'm sharing it out.

This sheet shows the monthly charges (2 lines on Starter + 1 on Extra, all with 25% discount from having AT&T Fiber). It also shows the fees breakdown and does a line by line comparison with what AT&T public docs say the fees could be.

Happy to answer any questions.

Tl;Dr: starting on October, autopay discount will change from $10/line/mo to $5/line/mo. Affected plans are listed at the bottom, but seems like many/most postpaid are there. You can keep the $10 autopay discount by using debit or linked bank account.