AT&T announces free new feature for concerned customers | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Last year, AT&T (T) landed in hot water when it sounded the alarm on a major problem that affected millions of customers.

The phone carrier revealed it suffered two major data breaches in March and April last year. AT&T said the one in March impacted over 70 million customers, exposing their sensitive information, such as social security numbers, dates of birth, mailing addresses, and phone numbers, to the dark web.

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The data breach in April involved hackers accessing AT&T’s Snowflake cloud workspace, compromising sensitive call and text logs of almost all of its phone customers.

These data breaches made AT&T customers more susceptible to fraud, identity theft, and phishing attacks, which resulted in the company facing several class-action lawsuits for the incidents.

AT&T later offered customers impacted by the data breaches one free year of identity theft detection, credit monitoring, and resolution services through Experian’s IdentityWorks service.

AT&T is helping keep customers’ personal information secure.

Image source&colon; Mark Makela/Getty Images

AT&T makes unexpected move to address a growing problem

Now that the free protection has expired, AT&T customers are getting another free layer of security.

The phone carrier announced a new Wireless Account Lock feature for phone customers “to help prevent unauthorized changes” to their wireless accounts, according to a new press release.

The new feature can be activated by the switch of a button in the myAT&T app. When the feature is toggled on, it disables several key account changes such as updates to billing information, phone number changes or transfers, SIM or eSIM swaps, device upgrades, adding a new line, or changes to authorized users.

It also recently launched a new Business Account Lock and an AT&T Prepaid wireless account lock with similar functions.

“Criminals put a lot of energy into getting your username and password,” said AT&T in the press release. “They send fraudulent emails and text messages asking you for it. They buy ads on search engines that look like links to real webpages – then ask for your password on a fake site. Wireless Account Lock can help with this on your wireless account.”

AT&T recently suffered another big data leak

The move from AT&T comes after hackers reportedly leaked data from about 86 million AT&T customers on the dark web last month. The leaked information included customers’ full names, date of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, and social security numbers.

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AT&T told HackRead.com in a statement that the leaked information is from the data breach it faced in March last year. It said it has since notified law enforcement and is investigating the situation.

“It is not uncommon for cybercriminals to re-package previously disclosed data for financial gain,” said AT&T in the statement. “We just learned about claims that AT&T data is being made available for sale on dark web forums, and we are conducting a full investigation.”

Data breaches have been rising rapidly nationwide. According to a report from Identity Theft Research Center, the number of data breach victims during the first half of 2024 surpassed 1 billion, a 490% year-over-year increase compared to the first half of 2023.