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AT&T Inc. today said that unauthorized persons illegally hacked into a computer system and accessed personal data, including credit card information, from several thousand customers who purchased DSL equipment through the company’s online Web store.

The unauthorized electronic access took place over the weekend, was discovered within hours and the online store was shut down immediately. AT&T also quickly notified the major credit card companies whose customer accounts were involved. The company is now working with law enforcement.

Customer notifications are ongoing by email, phone and letter to fewer than 19,000 customers. In addition to notifying those customers who were affected, the company will pay for credit monitoring services to assist in protecting the customers involved.

“We recognize that there is an active market for illegally obtained personal information. We are committed to both protecting our customers’ privacy and to weeding out and punishing the violators,” said Priscilla Hill-Ardoin, chief privacy officer for AT&T. “We deeply regret this incident and we intend to pay for credit monitoring services for customers whose accounts have been impacted. We will work closely with law enforcement to bring these data thieves to account.”

Customers who have been affected have been provided with a toll-free number to call for more information.

Posted under Privacy

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T Tuesday, accusing the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans’ communications.

The NSA program came to light in December, when the New York Times reported that the president had authorized the agency to intercept telephone and Internet communications inside the United States without the authorization of any court. Over the ensuing weeks, it became clear that the NSA program has been intercepting and analyzing millions of Americans’ communications, with the help of the country’s largest phone and Internet companies.

Reporting has also indicated that those same companies—and AT&T specifically—have given the NSA direct access to their vast databases of communications records, including information about whom their customers have phoned or emailed with in the past. And yet little has been accomplished by this illegal spying: recent reports have shown that the data from this wholesale surveillance has done little more than waste FBI resources on dead leads.

“The NSA program is apparently the biggest fishing expedition ever devised, scanning millions of ordinary Americans’ phone calls and emails for ’suspicious’ patterns, and it’s the collaboration of US telecom companies like AT&T that makes it possible,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “When the government defends spying on Americans by saying, ‘If you’re talking to terrorists we want to know about it,’ that’s not even close to the whole story.”

In the lawsuit, EFF alleges that AT&T, in addition to allowing the NSA direct access to the phone and Internet communications passing over its network, has given the government unfettered access to its over 300 terabyte “Daytona” database of caller information—one of the largest databases in the world.

“AT&T’s customers reasonably expect that their communications are private and have long trusted AT&T to follow the law and protect that privacy. Unfortunately, AT&T has betrayed that trust,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. “At the NSA’s request, AT&T eviscerated the legal safeguards required by Congress and the courts with a keystroke.”

By opening its network and databases to unrestricted spying by the government, EFF alleges that AT&T has violated the privacy of AT&T customers and the people they call and email, as well as broken longstanding communications privacy laws.

While other organizations are suing the government directly, EFF is seeking to protect Americans’ privacy by stopping the collaboration of AT&T with the illegal NSA spying program and making it economically impossible for AT&T to continue to give its customers’ information to the government.

“Congress has set up strong laws protecting the privacy of your communications, strictly limiting when telephone and Internet companies can subject your phone calls to government scrutiny,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. “The companies that have betrayed their customers’ trust by illegally handing the NSA direct access to their networks and databases must be brought to account. AT&T needs to put a sign on its door that reads, ‘Come Back With a Warrant.’”

In the suit filed Tuesday, EFF is representing the class of all AT&T customers nationwide. EFF is seeking an injunction to stop AT&T participation in the illegal NSA program, as well as billions of dollars in damages for violation of federal privacy laws

Posted under Customer Service

Cingular and AT&T Wireless, which merged late last year to form the nation’s largest cell phone company, have the worst combined complaint record for 2004, according to records obtained by Consumers Union from the Federal Communications Commission through the Freedom of Information Act. AT&T Wireless also had the worse complaint record for two years running, the data showed.

The total number of complaints filed about wireless phone service also increased nearly 38 percent from 2003 to 2004, according the FCC’s website. Complaints rose from 21,357 in 2003 to 29,478 in 2004.

“The staggering increase in complaints is further evidence that reform is needed in the wireless phone market so consumers can get a fair shake,” said Janee Briesemeister, senior policy analyst for Consumers Union, non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports.

“Since the cell phone industry brought out its ‘voluntary consumer code,’ consumer complaints have skyrocketed, which shoots down their claim that the marketplace is working and consumer rights’ laws aren’t needed. The numbers don’t lie – there continues to be a problem, and its getting worse, not better.”

Of the more than 29,000 complaints filed in 2004, Cingular-AT&T Wireless ranked first among the top eight carriers both on a total complaint basis (combining each company’s complaint record prior to and after the merger), and in complaints adjusted to account for differences in the number of subscribers. The combined complaints for Cingular-AT&T Wireless came in at 289 per million customers. Of the national wireless companies, Verizon had the fewest complaints per million, at 76. Overall, regional carrier US Cellular has the lowest number of complaints per million subscribers, at 39.

For all of the major cell phone companies, consumers complained the most about billing problems. Complaints about transferring their phone numbers, service quality, contracts and marketing were close behind.

Consumer Help Web customer files show the same experience. “AT&T is by far the least responsive of wireless companies, ” said Consumer Help Web President Joan Bounacos. “We have referred consumer complaints to regulatory agencies and local consumer attorneys five times in the past year.”

Bounacos said the company’s records show a complete lack of response rather than a response that was not consumer-friendly. “It’s as though a brick wall is put between the company and consumers,” she said. “Even letters to executives go unanswered.”

To view specific complaint data go to Cell-Phone Complaints: A Sorry Picture for Cingular/AT&T.

Posted under Customer Service