AT&T customers in South Florida call data breach "invasion of privacy"
MIAMI — Hayley is an AT&T customer and relies on her phone for private conversations with her friends and family.
She is one of millions of AT&T customers who may be victims of a data breach. That doesn't sit well with her.
"It's just an invasion of privacy," she said.
The company said a hacker got a hold of phone numbers and records of calls and texts of nearly all customers from May to October 2022, and a small number of customers from January 2023. AT&T said the hacker didn't get ahold of the content in those calls and texts, but Hayley expects better from them.
"I think that with a phone carrier, it's different than social media," she said. "You would think it would be a little bit more protected since you're paying for it."
AT&T said the hacker got a hold of the data through a third-party cloud service that they use. However, cybersecurity specialist Jeff Bernstein said there's a risk in outsourcing your data storage.
"You're only as secure as your weakest partner that has access to your data," he said.
Bernstein said moving forward, AT&T customers should button up the security measures for anything connected to their phone numbers, such as strong passwords and multi-factor authentication. He noted that a phone number can be an opening for a hacker to access even more sensitive information.
"If you were to put my phone number into Facebook, you would come up with my profile," Bernstein said. "Once an attacker has your profile and your phone number there's a lot of chaos that data can cause."
CBS News Miami asked AT&T if they'll still use a third party to store data. They have not responded. A company spokesperson said all customers that have been impacted have been notified. AT&T doesn't believe any of the data in the breach is publicly available.