From targeted wiretaps to bulk surveillance dragnets, phone companies have been at the center of privacy concerns for decades—and their time in the limelight isn’t over yet. On Friday, telecom giant AT&T announced that it recently suffered a data breach impacting call and text messaging records of “nearly all” its customers. The company is in the process of notifying about 110 million people that they were affected.
AT&T said in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it learned about the data breach on April 19. Attackers exfiltrated data between April 14 and April 25. The company said in its SEC submission that the US Justice Department authorized delayed disclosure of the breach on May 9 and again on June 5, pending investigation. AT&T added that it is “working with law enforcement in its efforts to arrest those involved in the incident.” So far, “at least…
