AT&T Data Breach August 2014: Compromises Social Security Numbers, Driver's License

AT&T has been victimized by its own employee again.

The major carrier announced that another data breach has occurred after one of its employees broke the company's privacy policy. Addressed to Vermont-based subscribers, AT&T informed about the situation through a letter.

The company stated, "We recently determined that one of our employees violated out strict privacy and security guidelines by accessing your account without authorization."

The breach was reportedly occured earlier in August. The company said that the employee may have obtained valuable account information, which included social security and driver's license numbers.

In addition, the Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) may have also been viewed. The CPNI includes metadata such as time, date, duration and destination number of established calls, explained ZDNet.

This is not the first time AT&T was victimized of inside-job data breach. Back in June, the company confirmed a similar situation involving three of its employees.

According to BGR, the perpetrators dwelled over the personal accounts of AT&T's customers for almost two weeks in April. AT&T's Executive Director for Media Relations Mark Siegel stated via Re/code, "This is completely counter to the way we require our vendors to conduct business. We know our customers count on us and those who support our business to act with integrity and trust, and we take that very seriously."

The current situation could bring previously affected customers to nostalgia. But, AT&T's Director of Finance Billing Operations Michael Chiaramonte assured subscribers saying, "On behalf of AT&T, please accept my sincere apology for this incident. Simply stated, this is not the way we conduct business, and as a result, this individual no longer works for AT&T."

Authorities were notified in both incidents.

CNET reported that there are about 1,600 customers affected in Vermont. The outlet added that data breach is not entirely new, saying that some companies over the last few years were affected big-time.

In 2011, over 70 million clueless gamers of Sony's PlayStation Network were hacked by a single person, stealing personal information. In 2013, 110 million customers were affected by personal information theft in Target, resulting from a hack in its systems.

More recently, Reuters noted a massive cyberattack of theft at JPMorgan Chase & Co which involved Apple's iCloud. We have also reported previously on four members of the International Computer Hacking Ring who have been indicted for related offenses against Microsoft, Epic Games, the U.S. Military, Valve and Zombie Studios.

AT&T recommends that customers contact credit reporting agencies and change account passcodes.