AT&T Confirms Data Breach

New York, NYIn a year filled with data breaches and data breach lawsuits, even one more data breach story can seem like too much. With each new store, restaurant or communications company that announces a breach, customers wonder if their personal information is ever truly safe. Data breach lawsuits, alleging companies have not done enough to protect consumer information have been filed, while companies scramble to ensure they do not fall victim to hackers.

AT&T is reportedly the latest company to confirm it was victim of a data breach, although in this case the perpetrators were reportedly employees of one of AT&T’s vendors. According to Dallas Business Journal (6/13/14), the employees allegedly stole the personal information of AT&T Mobility customers, although AT&T did not disclose how many customers were affected by the breach. The breach reportedly occurred between April 9 and April 21, and was done in an attempt to unlock phones for resale.

Approximately three employees of an AT&T vendor were allegedly involved in the data breach.

Meanwhile, P.F. Chang’s China Bistro Inc. is also investigating whether any of its customers’ debit or credit card information was stolen during a data breach. According to The Wall Street Journal (6/10/14), the possible breach was noticed by a blogger who warned that information for stolen debit and credit cards was put up on an underground site linked to card information stolen during the Target data breach.

So far, a data breach at P.F. Chang’s has not been confirmed.

eBay was also reportedly the victim of a data breach, one that may have affected more than 100 million users. Time (5/23/14) notes that the Federal Trade Commission has announced it is conducting a probe into the data breach. eBay reportedly notified consumers that a data breach had occurred but that financial information was not compromised.

Lawsuits have been filed against a variety of companies, alleging customer information is not being properly protected from hackers and data breaches. According to The Legal Intelligencer (6/12/14), more and more of these lawsuits are being settled before going to court. Part of the issue, according to the article, is that judges and the public may be growing increasingly frustrated with how companies handle customer information.

A major question in data breach lawsuits is whether or not the loss of information is enough to make a claim for harm, even if the stolen information is not used. In some cases, such as in cases of stolen laptops, sensitive information may not be recognized by the thief and may be discarded, as opposed to situations where hackers purposely steal credit card numbers for the purpose of selling that information.