• AT&T opens unlimited iPad data access beyond its subscriber base.
• World Cup viewers gain a new way to stay connected.
• The service works directly through supported iPad eSIM settings.

With the FIFA World Cup drawing millions of viewers across the United States, AT&T has chosen this moment to launch a product it is describing as a first among major US wireless carriers.

Its new wireless data option targets iPad users seeking temporary connectivity without committing to traditional monthly plans or service agreements.

The newly announced Unlimited Day Pass provides 24 hours of wireless data connectivity for $3 per day without requiring contracts, subscriptions, or credit checks.

A daily data option for iPad users

Eligible Wi-Fi + Cellular iPad owners across the US can now purchase this unlimited data access, regardless of their existing mobile provider.

AT&T says the service is available not only to its own customers, but also to eligible users whose primary wireless service comes from competing carriers.

The offering works through eSIM technology and can be activated directly from supported iPad settings without downloading a separate app.

According to the company, users can purchase access through a debit or credit card and begin using the cellular connectivity afterwards.

AT&T stated that the first-day pass will be provided at no charge, although the complimentary offer is limited to one eligible iPad per customer.

After that introductory period, users can continue purchasing additional passes whenever connectivity is required without entering longer-term service commitments.

The company argues that many cellular-capable iPads remain disconnected from mobile networks despite supporting wireless data functionality through embedded eSIM technology.

This new approach attempts to provide occasional access for travel, remote work, sporting events, and situations where dependable Wi-Fi connections are unavailable.

No contracts, though some limitations remain

AT&T describes the product as unlimited data, though network management policies still apply during periods of heavy demand.

The company notes that data speeds may be temporarily reduced when network congestion occurs, similar to practices used across many wireless services.

Another limitation involves device usage, since the plan is intended specifically for eligible iPad models rather than broader connectivity purposes.

AT&T confirmed that Unlimited Day Pass does not include hotspot functionality, meaning users cannot share the connection with other devices.

The service currently supports eligible US iPad models equipped with eSIM capabilities, extending access beyond AT&T's traditional subscriber base.

That distinction makes the offer unusual among major American carriers, which generally tie wireless data plans to existing customer relationships.

“Our goal with any product is to make it simple for people to connect wherever they are, across the devices they use most,” said Josh Goodell, vice president of Consumer Product Management at AT&T.

Ahead of a major event like the FIFA World Cup, this may be an attractive plan especially for those who have selected games that they are interested in.

However, whether this on-demand wireless access becomes widely adopted after the World Cup remains unclear.

• AT&T claims that only 3% of current households in California still use copper landlines
• The communications giant estimates the maintenance cost of such a service at approximately $1 billion
• California is one of 21 states currently opposed to AT&T's retirement of copper landlines, setting up a potential future state-versus-federal legal battle over authority

AT&T has filed a lawsuit against the state of California, petitioning the FCC to end state-sanctioned regulations that require it to offer services as a Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

The lawsuit names both the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the state attorney general as defendants, even as it asks the FCC for permission to discontinue traditional phone service in areas where better service options are available.

The telecoms provider also seeks relief from state regulations, which it contends are superseded by federal regulations.

A complex issue, driven by profitability, reliability, and ecological concerns

AT&T has pointed out that not only does the copper-based infrastructure in its current shape cost over $1 billion to maintain, while serving only 3% of its user base, but it is also prone to pilferage, especially due to rising copper prices globally, making it a relatively easy target for thieves.

It also noted that California is now the only state with regulatory roadblocks that prevent AT&T from fully phasing out its copper-based service, even as it claims that as many as 80% of adults nationwide use wireless phone service as their sole medium for calls, with most of those that do not leveraging IP-based phone services instead.

AT&T's multi-pronged assault on California also highlighted the ecological benefits of such a move, stating that a shift away from copper could save an estimated 300 million kilowatt-hours annually by 2030, equivalent to eliminating emissions from 17 million gallons of gasoline.

No fiber-for-all plans just yet as AT&T eyes wireless to bridge a chunk of the gap

AT&T, for its part, does not want to replace all of its copper installations with fiber just yet. It aims to push a "wireless first" approach in certain areas where it deems wireless connectivity sufficient to replace existing copper-based infrastructure.

It stated in its lawsuit: "AT&T cannot invest its full resources to modernize its network while continuing to devote huge sums of money to keeping POTS alive. Because it makes no sense to maintain a ubiquitous, costly legacy network that consumers have largely abandoned, AT&T has sought to transition customers to IP-based services across its nationwide footprint."

The CPUC's stance on this is also clear: It states that it does not have specific rules regarding the retirement of copper facilities, but rather is willing to consider upgrades to fiber or 'other facilities' with a focus on reliability.

With 40,000 Lifeline subscribers left in California, thanks to a process that AT&T states the FFC calls 'grandfathering', which allowed it to stop accepting new customers for the service, there is still a sizeable amount of other affected customers; AT&T's petitions to the FCC point to it requesting permission to discontinue service to 184,000 residential and 15,000 business customers in the state.

With landlines often remaining functional even during wildfires, power outages, and cell tower failures, the state of California could make the argument that its approach is technology-neutral and AT&T is required to offer reliable coverage across the state, especially to rural or marginalized communities, which are expected to bear the brunt of any such move.

• AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are working together to offer standardized satellite connectivity
• It would benefit customers not covered by cell towers, like in national parks
• Operators globally are looking to use satellite for more than emergencies, now

In a rare turn of events, three of the biggest mobile carriers in the US have announced they will be working together to tackle 'dead zones' across the country using satellites.

The joint venture, formed by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, should help to improve connectivity in areas where traditional towers can fail, such as national parks and highways.

Satellites could also provide continuity in disaster-struck regions, where land-based infrastructure damages can cause widespread outages.

Satellite technology to eliminate dead zones

Because the joint venture's plan revolves around direct-to-device satellite tech, it would mean that regular smartphone could access signal in rural areas without consumers needing to buy specific satellite phones. While many phones now offer limited services via satellite, it's hoped that the scheme would make roaming between cellular and satellite networks more seamless.

"Having launched the first nationwide, satellite-powered direct-to-device network for text and data, we’ve seen firsthand how critical reliable connectivity can be when America needs it most," T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan commented.

T-Mobile already partners with SpaceX, which has been expanding its footprint across voice and data services on top of earlier emergency texting functionalities. AT&T and Verizon also have partnerships with AST SpaceMobile for their satellite services.

The announcement comes amid a broader global shift, whereby satellite networks are becoming more tightly integrated with regular 5G and 6G cell connections, instead of being a separate emergency-only tool.

As well as improving coverage and performance for customers, the joint venture also anticipates industry benefits, such as industry-wide device compatibility and an easier way for mobile network operators (MNOs) to integrate satellite connectivity for their customers.

The agreement in principle is yet to be confirmed, pending regulatory approval and confirmation of the finer details.

As someone who covers the best cell phone deals all year round, it's usually Verizon and T-Mobile that get the share of the coverage. Put simply, these two carriers tend to offer the most competitive promotions for new and existing customers alike.

Right now, however, AT&T is definitely offering some of the best deals – especially if you're on the hunt for a new iPhone.

The highlight? It has to be the carrier's deal on the iPhone Air right now, which is currently free with a new unlimited data line. That's not a newsworthy promotion by itself, but it's rare that you don't need a trade-in to be eligible. That's usually a rule that AT&T sticks to pretty steadfastly.

AT&T also has a few other interesting promotions you can stack to make this a stronger offering. Firstly, if you're a new online customer, you receive a $200 bonus eGift card for lower monthly costs. Secondly, if you're a multi-line user, then you can get four devices right now on an unlimited data plan that costs just $25/mo per line, which is a fantastic value for families.

Today's best iPhone deals at AT&T

• See more: check out all of today's phone deals at AT&T

Up until now, deals like the above have been the reserve of customers at T-Mobile and Verizon, so it's fantastic to see AT&T offer something similar for its users.

As previously stated, AT&T nearly always requires you to trade-in to get its biggest discounts, so it's actually quite newsworthy to see a device that's still valued at $1,000 available for free without any of the sorts. By all accounts, this promotion (when combined with the others) is better than those I saw at the carrier over Black Friday last year.

Of course, the iPhone Air isn't the most popular iPhone right now, so it's not entirely surprising that AT&T has singled out this device for such a strong promotion. Most people tend to go for the iPhone 17 Pro in this budget range because that device offers more cameras, better video specs, and better battery life. Don't discount the iPhone Air, however, as it's still an amazing phone for most people.

I've just spotted one of the best AT&T deals ever. Well, that might be hyperbole, but this promotion is just as good as those from the carrier's Black Friday sale back in November.

It's the carrier's deal on the often-overlooked iPhone Air, which is currently free with an installment plan on any of the carrier's post-paid unlimited plans.

That might not sound like some mind-blowing offer, but the devil is in the details. Firstly, this particular 'free phone' deal doesn't require the usual trade-in criteria that are usually required with this type of promotion. That's something that immediately gives this promotion the edge versus those on the more popular devices, like the iPhone 17 or iPhone 17 Pro, for example.

Secondly, there's the option to bundle four devices here on an unlimited plan that costs just $100/mo for four lines. This is a popular type of deal these days, but this is the first time I've seen it at AT&T specifically, and it's definitely a fantastic option for families for multi-line users. The plan in question here is the more basic 'AT&T Value Plus' plan, but you're still getting that much-needed unlimited data.

Today's best iPhone deal at AT&T

• See more: check out more of this week's best deals at AT&T

Don't overlook the iPhone Air

The iPhone Air is often overlooked in favor of the other devices in the range, and it's true - the device's main selling point is its super-thin design. The standard iPhone 17 is cheaper, while the iPhone 17 Pro offers a beefier array of specs at a similar price. By comparison, the iPhone Air can look a little lightweight (no pun intended).

But the iPhone Air is a really great iPhone in its own right, and one that really deserves to be looked at. For one, its 6.5-inch Super Retina XDR OLED display is excellent, and Apple has still managed to squeeze in the A19 Pro chipset, which provides plenty of power. If you can live without a few of the more advanced photography features from the 17 Pro, the iPhone Air offers a very similar experience in a stunning, minimalist package. I actually prefer the Air's more stylish and Apple-like design to the maximalist iPhone 17 Pro.

• AT&T is set to pay out a whopping $177 million to settle lawsuits over two major data breaches
• The breaches were disclosed in 2024, but they took place in 2019 and 2024
• Claims are only open for a limited time, so if you were affected, act fast

AT&T has suffered several major data breaches in the last few years, and two of them resulted in a class action lawsuit that has now resulted in a $177 million settlement. The telecom giant has agreed to pay the sum instead of going to trial.

The settlement covers incidents disclosed in 2024, which affected tens of millions of current and former AT&T users across the United States. Under the terms of the deal, you may be able to claim up to $7,500.

You can only file your claim for a short time, though. So here's how to find out whether you're eligible for the payout from AT&T's $177 million settlement and how to file a claim.

What are the data breaches covered by the settlement?

As outlined by Kroll, the risk and financial advisory firm that serves as the settlement administrator in this case, the class action lawsuit covers two separate data breaches.

The first breach occurred in 2019, but was only reported by AT&T in 2024, once the data was being sold on the dark web. This breach involved personal data of over 70 million AT&T customers, both current and former, including Social Security numbers, legal names, and birth dates. As a result of this breach, AT&T had to force-reset account passcodes for millions of customers.

The second breach hit AT&T shortly after the 2019 one was finally reported. Hackers were able to access the phone records stored in Snowflake, which is AT&T's cloud-based data warehouse. This breach, which took place in April 2024, reportedly affected all of AT&T's customers – around 109 million.

What are the details of the AT&T settlement?

Separate lawsuits were filed for both data breaches, but were later consolidated into a single case. All parties have agreed to a settlement in March 2025.

The official settlement website states that the "parties have settled the actions in their entirety without any admission of liability or wrongdoing."

Although now consolidated, the settlement is still split into two tiers: AT&T 1 Settlement Class and AT&T 2 Settlement Class. The first class covers the 2019 data breach, which also included SSNs, and it will be eligible for a $149 million payout in total; the second class (the 2024 breach) will receive the remaining $28 million.

How to find out if you qualify for the AT&T settlement?

Kroll Settlement Administration should send you an email if you qualify for the settlement, so keep checking your mailbox. Make sure to also check the spam folder.

If you believe that you should qualify for either part of the settlement, but have yet to receive your email, you can reach out first.

To do so, either call at (833) 890-4930 or send an inquiry to the following address:

AT&T Data Incident Settlement

c/o Kroll Settlement Administration LLC

P.O. Box 5324

New York, NY 10150-5324

How much money can you get from the settlement?

If you were affected by the 2019 data breach and can prove a documented financial loss as a result of it, you're eligible for up to $5,000. Those affected by the 2024 breach can qualify for up to $2,500.

It's technically possible that you might qualify for both, but you'd most likely need to present Kroll with proof of two separate incidents.

If you can't prove that the data breaches led to financial loss, but still qualify for the payout, you'll receive a pro rata share of the remaining money, so it'll depend on the number of claimants.

How to file a claim?

You can file a claim in the AT&T data breach settlement directly on the Kroll website or through the mail.

In either case, you'll need to have your own Class Member ID in order to file a claim, which you'll get once Kroll reaches out to you via email or otherwise.

If you'd rather not submit your claim online, you can print out the claim and mail it to the address we shared above. Here are the forms you should use depending on which claim you were affected by.

• 2019 AT&T data breach
• 2024 AT&T data breach
• Claim for those affected by both breaches

The claim has to be submitted or postmarked by December 18, 2025.

AT&T has just introduced a brand-new deal this week that's a potential game-changer if you were thinking about making the switch.

The carrier is currently offering prepaid Visa Reward Cards of up to $800 in value to new customers to help pay off any early termination fees from rival carriers. Impressively, you can get a gift card for every line you switch over, up to a maximum of ten lines.

This gift card is particularly handy if you've been eying up AT&T's other deals on phones, such as the brand-new iPhone 17 series. Right now, you can get a huge trade-in rebate of up to $1,100 on these stunning new devices at the carrier - a deal that's definitely worth switching for if you're eligible.

As a side note, AT&T is also offering $200 off per line when you order online, which is a nice, stackable deal that you can use to make your new plan even more affordable.

Today's best deals from AT&T

• See more: check out all of today's deals at AT&T

The hotly anticipated Google Pixel 10 preorders are now live, and all the usual carriers are offering excellent deals right now to entice potential upgrades. There is one deal, however, that I think stands out as the highlight.

Over at AT&T, you can currently get a massive trade-in rebate of up to $1,200 off, plus a free Google Pixel Watch 3 – an extremely solid bonus gift that's perfect for pairing up with any of the latest Pixel phones.

As TechRadar's deals editor, I've been scanning through all of today's deals and this is currently the only one where you get a watch as a bonus gift. Over at Verizon, for example, you can get a trade-in rebate of up to $1,200, but that carrier doesn't throw in any extras.

There is one slight caveat in that you'll need a cellular line for the watch to be eligible for the $200 rebate. That means the watch itself is free, but you'll need to take out a plan that costs around $10 per month, as with all cellular smartwatches at the big carriers. Still, if you'd rather skip the watch and just go for the trade-in, then AT&T's current rebate is currently up there with the best on the market.

Today's best Google Pixel 10 deal

If you're looking for more information on these devices, then you can head on over to our Google Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro and Pro XL, and Pixel 10 Pro Fold hands-on reviews. We've had a chance to try out every device, and so far, our initial impressions are positive.

While the devices retain the same outward appearance as the Pixel 9 series, that's by no means a bad thing, as they're still some of the most gorgeous (and premium) phones on the market. Under the hood, the devices have also received significant upgrades to the chipset and camera arrays. Improvements to AI features also look promising – as does the new 'Pixelsnap' magnetic charging feature.

More Google Pixel 10 deals today

Don't worry if you missed the offer last week, as a new limited-time deal on AT&T's fiber plans is available right now, meaning you can get an extra $100 reward card when you upgrade online to one of the carrier's super-fast internet packages.

It's easy to get, too. Simply enter the code EXTRA100 at checkout when signing up for a new line on any of the carrier's fiber plans to get your free gift. The offer ends on August 20, so you have limited time to take advantage of it.

Better still, if you choose one of AT&T's higher-end plans from 1 Gig and upwards, you get a $150 gift card on top of that $100 bonus from the discount code. It's a significant saving altogether and ideal if you're setting up a new connection with AT&T.

Oh, there's more, too. If you choose to sign up as an AT&T mobile customer as well after getting your fiber connection set up, you can get a 20% discount on your monthly fiber bill with an eligible plan. That's in addition to the combined $250 worth of reward cards from the other deals above. It's quite a package deal if you're happy to bundle everything together with AT&T.

Today's best AT&T fiber internet deal

• See more: check out all of today's deals at AT&T

AT&T's fiber internet is a relatively expensive option and is not available in all areas, but if you're eligible to sign up, you can get a super-speedy connection that's well-suited to gaming, streaming, and more. A plan starts at around $55 per month for the 300Mbps connection, which is still fast enough for general use, but demanding users in busy homes may want to consider one of the higher speeds of 1 Gig or more to prevent slowdown.

The best smartphone deals come from mobile network carriers, but there’s a big catch you should know about if you’re considering getting an iPhone 16 Pro ‘On Us’ or if you want to score a massive discount on a Galaxy Z Fold 7. If you’re planning on switching phones before the payment plan has ended, there’s a major catch, and the warning was hard to find in the contract agreements I signed.

Here’s my situation: when I wanted a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra in early 2023, AT&T offered it for a very low monthly price on two conditions. First, I needed to trade in any Galaxy phone in any condition. No sweat! I had one hanging around. Second, I needed to sign up for a new line of service on a plan with unlimited monthly data. Also, no problem for me; I needed a new line and I use a ton of GBs.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra with 512GB of storage was almost $1,400 when I bought it. That equals $38.34 per month for 36 months, and AT&T was offering to pay more than 70% of that monthly payment as long as I was a customer. I pay $10.56 monthly, and in the end, I’ll have paid only $380 for the best phone I could buy back then.

Yeah, I don't keep any phone for 3 whole years, but this time...

Of course, I wasn’t planning on keeping the Ultra for longer than a year. I signed a three-year agreement, but I planned on trading the Galaxy S23 Ultra for an S24 Ultra a year later. I wouldn’t sign up for a new contract; instead, I would just trade in my phone. Samsung would give me $1,000 for the trade (Samsung’s norm), and I would pay the remaining $400 in cash. Instead, I got hosed.

Before I traded in my Galaxy S23 Ultra, I looked into selling it on Swappa. When I entered my phone’s IMEI number – the unique identifier assigned to all smartphones – Swappa rejected my sale. I was told my phone is ineligible for sale because there is a lien on the phone from AT&T.

I honestly did not know a phone lien was a thing. I knew that information could be attached to an IMEI number. For instance, if you report a phone stolen, the IMEI number can identify the stolen device later if the thief tries to sell it. I had no clue the IMEI could be used by my carrier to claim ownership over a phone I purchased.

Here's how AT&T will stop you from selling your phone before you pay it off

I have spent time poring over every document I signed. I cannot find the word ‘lien’ anywhere. I reached out to AT&T, and they explained what was happening… kind of.

My new smartphone does not technically have a ‘lien,’ but the contract works the same way. AT&T claims a purchase money security interest (PMSI) on my device until it is paid in full. That means they have the right to claim any proceeds if I sell the device.

That sounds awfully like a lien, huh? It’s close, but a lien is more legally enforceable. The real purpose of a purchase money security interest clause is to make sure AT&T gets paid if I go into bankruptcy and I’m forced to sell my smartphone. In practice, it keeps me from selling the phone early, the same way a lien on my car title would prevent me from selling my car.

It's not just an AT&T problem, but carriers still offer a good deal

This isn’t just an AT&T issue. A Verizon rep told me, “We do not place liens on devices. If a customer does not continually meet eligibility requirements to get the device on us, they are responsible for payment of the device.” That sounds definitive, but Verizon’s contract language contains a purchase money security interest clause similar to the language AT&T uses.

T-Mobile did not respond with comment, and I could not find any PMSI clause in T-Mobile contracts. However, if you are planning on ditching your phone early, you may want to read the current contract closely, as terms can change.

I still think carrier deals for free phones are good deals. Even if you only get a discount, it’s a huge discount. If you want a Galaxy Z Fold 7, for instance, that phone costs $1,999.99 / £1,799 / AU$2,899. If you sign up with AT&T, they will pay up to $1,100 of that total if you stick with them for three years.

For most people, that will be the only way to afford today’s most expensive phones, and three years is the right amount of time to own today’s best phones. The required service plan will be a pricier option, but if you use a lot of data like me, a Wi-Fi hotspot amount, you’re probably getting a top plan anyway. You might as well get the best deal on the top phone to go with it.

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If you've been thinking about upgrading your internet, then now's a great time to consider AT&T's fibre plans. The carrier is giving away $50 reward cards right now as a limited-time-only flash sale.

To claim your gift, all you need to do is use the code SUMMER50 at checkout when picking up a new line on any of the carrier's fibre plans. Note, this particular deal is only eligible for online purchases.

If you're looking to buy one of AT&T's higher-end plans, you'll also get an additional $150 gift card on top of the previously mentioned $50. To stack up your savings, you'll need to use the code and check out with a 1Gbps fiber plan or above.

While I'm here, it's also worth mentioning that AT&T mobile customers will also get a 20% monthly discount on their plan cost. That's on top of all the various gift cards already mentioned in this article, so there's plenty of added incentive to bundle your internet and phone plans together if you're an existing AT&T customer.

Today's best AT&T fiber internet deal

• See more: check out all of today's deals at AT&T

While AT&T's fiber internet can be pricey, and availability is still limited in some areas, you get a super-speedy connection that's perfect for gaming, streaming, and multiple users. Plans start at around $55 per month for the 300Mbps connection, which is still plenty for most users.

AT&T's excellent flash sale on the brand's high-end fiber internet plans is back again this week, with the carrier giving away $50 reward cards with a new plan.

To get your card, you need to use the code SUMMER50 at checkout. As before, this bonus flash-sale gift stacks on top of the existing gift card of up to $150 that AT&T was already offering. With the code, you can get even cheaper bills by bundling these prepaid cards together.

To get the full $200 off, you need to use the code and sign up for the higher-end 1Gbps plan or above. That will get you the $50 gift card from the code, plus an existing $150 gift card. Note, you can still get a smaller gift card of $50 or $150 with one of the more basic options.

Note that all the above 'freebies' also stack with a 20% discount for mobile customers. If you're using AT&T for your phone plan, then there's an added incentive here to bundle everything together for a cheaper all-in-one package. If you're not an AT&T customer, then you can instead get a full six months of service for free as a welcome bonus – again, stacking with the above gift cards.

Today's best AT&T fiber internet deal

• See more: check out all of today's deals at AT&T

While AT&T's fiber internet can be pricey, and availability is still limited in some areas, you get a super-speedy connection that's perfect for gaming, streaming, and multiple users. Plans start at around $55 per month for the 300Mbps connection, which is still plenty for most users.

AT&T is holding a flash sale this week, including a superb deal on the brand's already-excellent high-speed fiber internet.

For a limited time only, you'll get a $50 reward card when you use the code SUMMER50 at checkout. That's on top of an existing gift card of up to $150 in value that's also available right now - an excellent freebie that you can use to get cheaper bills after a few months.

Prices start at around $55 per month for the 300Mbps connection, but this entry-level plan only comes with the $50 gift card, plus the $50 from the flash sale. For the full $200, you'll have to sign up for the 1 Gbps plan or higher, which starts at $80 per month. That will get you the $50 promo value, plus the full value $150 gift card that was already up for grabs.

While AT&T's fiber internet can be pricey, and availability is still limited in some areas, you'll get a super-speedy connection that's perfect for gaming, streaming, and multiple users. If you're an existing AT&T mobile customer, then you'll also be entitled to a 20% discount when you sign up for the brand's fiber internet plans. That can equate to over $275 per year in total savings, so bundling together both your plans under AT&T is a solid option.

Today's best AT&T fiber internet deal

• See more: check out all of today's deals at AT&T

If you're a new AT&T customer, then there's yet another promotion that's worth considering this week. The carrier, in addition to the above gift card and bundle discounts, is also offering a whopping 6 months of service for free when you sign-up to both a fiber internet plan and mobile plan. Combined, these can be pretty pricey but you'll get access to a massive discount here - and the various deals that AT&T also offers on the latest phones from Samsung, Apple, and other leading brands.

• Wireless Account Lock is now available for AT&T consumer and business users alike
• Free feature that can be toggled in the myAT&T app
• The feature prevents SIM-swapping and similar attacks

AT&T has introduced a new feature to protect consumer and business accounts from SIM-swapping attacks.

Wireless Account Lock will be able to disable several key account changes, a key part of SIM-swapping, which can give attackers control of a victim’s phone number and lets them intercept SMS-based two-factor authentication app codes.

“The lock forces an extra step before important account changes can be made,” AT&T said of the new tool. “It prevents anyone from buying a device on the account, for example, or conducting a SIM swap – moving a phone number to a SIM in a different device.”

Malicious insiders and tricked employees

The feature is now available in the myAT&T app for postpaid consumer wireless accounts. There, users can toggle it on or off, adding an extra step before they can upgrade a device, change a SIM or an eSIM card, initiate a phone number transfer, add a new line, change billing information, change authorized users, or change phone numbers.

For business users, there is the Business Account Lock and an AT&T Prepaid wireless account lock with similar functions. For businesses, account admins can find the lock switch wherever they access the account online.

Adversaries typically pull off SIM swapping attacks by tricking or bribing mobile carrier employees, or using stolen personal data to impersonate the victim and convince the carrier to transfer the number to a SIM card they control.

Once successful, the attacker can reset passwords and take over sensitive accounts like email, banking, or crypto wallets.

Although it might sound far-fetched, these types of attacks happen all the time - most recently, Bitdefender reported a student interning at the Société Générale bank was arrested under suspicion of helping SIM-swapping scammers defraud 50 clients.

Via MacRumors

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• Trump says this was the second time AT&T was responsible for a disruption
• AT&T says it was the video conferencing platform that was at fault
• We don't know which platform Trump was using - is he a Zoom or Teams man?

US President Donald Trump has criticized AT&T on Truth Social, claiming its network failed during a major conference call with faith leaders.

"I’m doing a major Conference Call with Faith Leaders from all over the Country, and AT&T is totally unable to make their equipment work properly," the leader wrote in an online post.

Trump added this was the second time AT&T had caused disruptions to a video conference, calling for improvements to be made to the network's stability.

Trump blames AT&T for video call disruption

"If the Boss of AT&T, whoever that may be, could get involved – it would be good," the President added, while mentioning that "tens of thousands" of participants were also on the line.

Responding to US Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on X, AT&T wrote: "We've reached out to the White House and are working to quickly understand and assess the situation."

However, in a follow-up reply to the thread, AT&T disclosed the issue was "caused by an issue with the conference call platform, not [the AT&T] network."

Neither AT&T nor the White House have disclosed who the video conferencing provider was in this instance, and Trump is yet to publicly acknowledge AT&T's response. There are no details on the earlier disruption Trump associated with AT&T, either.

In a follow-up post, Trump "apologize[d] for the long wait on the Faith Leaders Conference Call," adding he may have to reschedule the call using a different provider.

TechRadar Pro has asked AT&T for more details on the incident and the results of its investigation, but the company did not immediately respond.

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• AT&T is investigating new claims of a data breach
• The data was posted on a breach forum, and includes plaintexts SSNs
• It could be new, or could be a re-release of older data

AT&T is investigating a leak of data on a cybercrime forum, but with some skepticism, as some have suggested it may just be a re-release of an earlier data breach.

The trove of data includes 88 million customer records, but 86 million of these are unique, including personal information such as dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses.

What makes this breach potentially dangerous is that the data is highly organized, and includes 44 million plaintext social security numbers that could be used to commit fraud and identity theft.

Just a re-release or something more sinister?

The HackRead research team first spotted the files on May 15, with the same collection of data appearing again on June 3 and spreading to multiple other leak sites and forums since then.

There is some debate over the origin of the data, with HackRead finding similarities between encrypted and plaintext values from the collection that could tie it to the April 2024 AT&T breach that utilized the Snowflake vulnerability.

On the other hand, it could be a re-release of a previous breach, or a combination of one of the many AT&T breaches.

For example, in 2024 AT&T confirmed that the data of 51 million customers had been stolen after previously denying that the data was stolen from AT&T systems.

The data was initially stolen in 2021. The famous Snowflake vulnerability debacle of 2024 also saw customer data stolen from AT&T, with the company then negotiating and paying $300,000 in Bitcoin to one of the hackers to delete the data.

The bottom line is that the data includes almost everything a cyber criminal would need to commit fraud or steal an identity, making identity theft protection and credit monitoring a good choice for those potentially affected by the breach.

Via The Register

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• Verizon and AT&T are taking the hassle out of personal storage
• Upgrades for group storage are a game changer
• Perks like AI photo editing tools could come in handy

Taken one photograph too many and run out of cloud storage? It’s happened to us all at some point, and there’s nothing more frustrating.

Faced with the prospect of upgrading your plan and forking out for more capacity, it’s worth exploring all of the available options.

Luckily, there are a broad variety out there, but millions of Americans are still missing out regardless.

Verizon cloud storage deals

Verizon, for example, has little-known perks for customers in this regard, offering unlimited cloud storage at a relatively low monthly cost.

Verizon Cloud gives customers access to unlimited cloud storage for $13.99 per month. Better still, if you’re willing to pay $19.99 per month, this can be expanded to a group plan for up to five users, bringing friends or family into the fold.

Both the individual and group unlimited plans come with some handy perks, including automatic backup capabilities. This allows you to keep copies of photographs, documents, or videos and access them via your smartphone or computer.

The service also boasts a range of security features, including a PIN-protected private folder to safeguard sensitive content such as driver’s licenses, passports, or just your personal photos and videos.

One very handy aspect of the Verizon Cloud service is that your saved contacts, photographs, and videos can be easily transferred to your new mobile device when you upgrade.

AT&T's competitor service has added perks

Verizon isn’t alone on this front, either, as AT&T also offers unlimited cloud storage services for customers.

Similar to Verizon Cloud, the AT&T Personal Cloud service comes in at a slightly higher cost, but with additional benefits and features.

Users of this service can access unlimited storage for $19.99 per month, but this is for one individual.

AT&T Personal Cloud offers virtually the same services as the aforementioned Verizon Cloud, including automatic backup capabilities and PIN-protected private folders for sensitive materials.

Some features do differ, though, including in-built AI photo editing tools, which could come in handy for those looking to edit on the go.

The service can also be accessed anywhere, including via your phone, tablet, or desktop computer - and it works on iOS, Android, MacOS, and Windows.

There are other options available out there for consumers, but it’s worth noting that a significant portion of these are capped, albeit with most offering several terabytes’ worth of capacity.

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• A US Army soldier is facing charges linked to the Snowflake hack
• The accused faces $500,000 in fines and 20 years behind bars
• The soldier intends to plead guilty to all charges

A US army soldier accused of two counts of unlawfully transferring confidential phone records has said he intends to plead guilty.

The soldier attempted to “knowingly and intentionally sell and transfer, and attempt to sell and transfer, confidential phone records,” US prosecutors said [PDF].

Cameron John Wagenius, the accused, informed a federal court in Seattle of his plea on Wednesday following his arrest in January 2025. Prosecutors have also found links between Wagenius’ attacks against AT&T and Verizon, with the 2024 Snowflake hack that saw upwards of 150 accounts compromised.

Up to 10 years in prison

Wagenius faces a fine of up to $250,000 and a maximum prison sentence of 10 years for each of the two counts, according to documents filed by his lawyer. Wagenius’ involvement in the Snowflake hacks, alongside Connor Moucka and John Binns, was confirmed by prosecutors in January, who linked methods used the AT&T and Verizon attacks to the Snowflake account breaches.

U.S. attorney Tessa Gorman said the breaches “arise from the same computer intrusion and extortion and include some of the same stolen victim information.” The attack against Snowflake was among the worst cyberattacks of 2024, with corporate accounts linked to AT&T, Santander, and Ticketmaster compromised, with Moucka and Binns reportedly making upwards of $2 million through extortion.

In the underground world, Wagenius used the pseudonym ‘Kiberphant0m’, the same alias that threatened to leak sensitive US government call logs when one of his co-conspirators in the Snowflake attack was arrested.

Kiberphant0m demanded comms with AT&T, writing on a dark web forum that, “In the event you do not reach out to us, [AT&T], all presidential government call logs will be leaked. You don’t think we don’t have plans in the event of an arrest? Think again.”

Moucka, who was arrested in Canada, and Binns, who was arrested in Turkey, are both awaiting extradition to the US, where they face 20 counts of various crimes, including conspiracy, computer fraud and abuse, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

Via TheRegister

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If you're looking to line up the biggest possible trade-in rebate on one of the latest Galaxy S25 series, then you'll definitely want to check out AT&T's opening preorder deal this week.

Right now, this carrier is the only one on the market to offer the highest-end Galaxy S25 Ultra for free alongside a trade-in and plan. By comparison, all other carrier rebates cap out at $1,000 off, and Samsung's own deal offers just $900 off - although, admittedly, that's for unlocked devices without the pricey plan.

In addition to a maximum trade-in rebate of up to $1,299, AT&T's deals on the latest Galaxy S25 Ultra also include the option to throw in Galaxy Watch 7 and Samsung tablet for just $0.99 per month each. If you're looking for cheap accessories, then this is a great option; just note that you'll need to pay for additional accessory cellular lines if you claim these devices, so it's just a discount rather than a 'freebie' or gift.

Another little bonus you can take advantage of today is an additional $200 per-line discount when you order a plan and new phone together online. This particular promotion cropped up late last year as one of the carrier's Black Friday promotions, but it's still eligible and sticking around, it seems.

Get a free Galaxy S25 Ultra at AT&T with a trade

One caveat of this Galaxy S25 deal at AT&T is that it does require a 36-month unlimited plan of at least $79.99/mo in value to be eligible. That means it's available on the mid-tier Unlimited Extra plan and the Unlimited Premium plan but not the basic Unlimited Starter plan.

More Galaxy S25 deals to check out today

• Samsung: $900 instant trade-in credit and up to $300 instant Samsung Credit
• Verizon: get up to $1,000 off with a trade, plus free Galaxy Watch and tablet
• Amazon: free gift card worth up to $200
• Boost Mobile: get a Galaxy S25 Plus and unlimited plan for $65/mo
• Xfinity Mobile: get up to $1,000 off with a trade-in, plus $500 with switch

Most people overlook New Year's as a great time to upgrade a device, but this week's deals at AT&T are easily some of the best yet from the carrier.

Right now, AT&T's still holding out with a number of excellent seasonal deals from Black Friday all the way back in November. As you'd imagine, these promotions likely won't stick around for much longe,r so it's well worth considering that upgrade.

First and foremost is the $200 bonus in bill credits that the carrier is offering for those who pick up a new phone and line. That's on top of the already excellent trade-in rebates and discounts that AT&T is already offering across the board.

Speaking of which, some of this week's discounts on devices are also some of the best I've ever seen from the carrier. This week, for example, you can get the Google Pixel 9 for just $5.99/mo alongside a new unlimited plan - half the price of what you usually pay. Another great option is the iPhone 15 for $5.99/mo, which is another deal that doesn't require the usual trade-in criteria to be eligible.

You can check out more of this week's best AT&T deals just below or see our main best cell phone deals page for recommendations on other leading carriers.

Limited-time New Year deal at AT&T

This week's best AT&T deals

• More victims of Salt Typhoon attack unveiled by WSJ
• The extent of the damage caused by the attack is still unknown
• Some telecoms providers have removed the attackers from their systems

The recent Salt Typhoon cyberattacks may have breached more telecommunications providers than previously thought, with Charter Communications, Consolidated Communications, and Windstream all now believed to also have been affected.

The fresh list of victims comes from a new report by the Wall Street Journal, who cited people familiar with the matter.

The attack also exploited Fortinet network devices that did not have up-to-date security software installed, as well as vulnerable Cisco large network routers.

Attack may have started in 2023

The attack against US telecoms providers was first publicized in a joint statement by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on October 25, 2024 - however, the WSJ report states the attack is believed to have started as far back as fall of 2023 - around the same time US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was briefing telecom and tech executives on the depth and breadth of Chinese penetration into US critical infrastructure.

Salt Typhoon is now known to have successfully breached the networks of AT&T and Verizon in the attack, but little is known about what data the China-affiliated group was able to access.

Both Lumen and T-Mobile were also targeted during the attack, but both companies have said that they successfully stopped attackers from accessing sensitive customer information. Verizon confirmed that the data of a limited number of high-profile individuals involved in politics was targeted in attacks.

Salt Typhoon also gained access to a ‘lawful interception’ channel used by law enforcement agencies to perform court-ordered wiretaps for national security purposes, with China repeatedly denying any involvement in the attacks and accusing the US of spreading misinformation. China even went so far as to label Volt Typhoon - a similar group believed to be associated with Beijing - as a CIA asset set up to discredit the US’ rivals across the Pacific.

Both Fortinet and Cisco did not comment on the WSJ report, but both organizations have been in the cross hairs of cyber attacks from a range of cyber criminal groups.

Network routers with outdated firmware have been a favorite target as an initial access point for attackers and botnets for several years. Fortinet has also experienced a spate of attacks on its Windows VPN service and Fortigate VPN systems.

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• Connor Moucka and John Binns accused of attacking 10 companies, including AT&T
• The US Government claims they extorted 36 bitcoin from their victims
• Both were known to law enforcement in the past

The US government has accused two individuals of breaching 10 major companies, stealing their sensitive data, and then either extorting the firms for money, or selling the stolen data on the dark web. Among the victims is, most likely, AT&T, the American telecommunications powerhouse.

In the indictment, which TechCrunch published, the two individuals are named as Connor Moucka and John Binns. Both are already known, to both the media and law enforcement, as Alexander ‘Connor’ Moucka (aka Waifu and Judische) was taken into custody on October 30, in Canada, following a request by US law enforcement.

Binns, on the other hand, was already mentioned in relation to the AT&T hack, as one of the hackers with access to the stolen database, who tried to sell it back to the company. He was arrested in Turkey, for alleged crimes he committed in 2021 and, apparently, was to blame for the data breach that happened at T-Mobile, as well.

Hints of AT&T

The US government claim Moucka and Binns “devised and executed international computer hacking and wire fraud schemes to hack into at least 10 victim organizations’ protected computer networks, steal sensitive information, threaten to leak the stolen data unless the victims paid ransoms, and offer to sell online, and sell, the stolen data.”

“Through this scheme, the co-conspirators gained unlawful access to billions of sensitive customer records, including individuals’ non-content call and text history records, banking and other financial information, payroll records, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) registration numbers, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers, Social Security Numbers, and other personally identifiable information,” it says in the indictment.

The result of the attacks, the Government concludes, is profit of “at least 36 bitcoin ($2.5m at time of payment)” extorted from at least three victims.

While the document does not mention the names of victim companies, it does list Victim-2 as a major telecommunications company located in the United States, whose Cloud Computing Instance was hosted at computer servers located in Virginia. It was also said that this victim was breached in mid-April. All these things align it with AT&T.

Both the company, and the Department of Justice (DoJ), are currently silent on the matter.

Via TechCrunch

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• US federal agency issues warning against cellphone usage for work calls
• Warning comes in the aftermath of the breach of several US telecoms providers
• Attack has been attributed to Salt Typhoon, who also breached a number of ISPs

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has issued a warning to its workers that personal mobile devices should not be used for sensitive work calls due to the recent Chinese probing of US telecommunications networks.

The email sent by the CFPB acknowledges that “While there is no evidence that CFPB has been targeted by this unauthorized access, I ask for your compliance with these directives so we reduce the risk that we will be compromised.”

The warning also extends to contractors working for the CFB, and highlights the scale of the attack against US telecoms by the China-related group tracked as Salt Typhoon.

Telecoms attack worries federal agencies

There is no indication on exactly what data may have been exfiltrated from the telecoms providers, but initial reports suggest that call logs, unencrypted texts and some phone audio was exfiltrated by the attackers, including audio from a number of high-profile individuals related to the Harris and Trump campaigns alongside potentially hundreds of thousands of US citizens.

US officials are also cutting down on their phone use in response to the hack, with a former US official who spoke to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) stating, “There is a general reticence to use their cellphones.”

Salt Typhoon also managed to breach several internet service providers (ISP) in early October, including Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen, with the attackers also gaining access to a lawful wiretap used for surveillance by US authorities.

As the WSJ notes, a federal agency issuing a specific warning against the use of personal mobile phones indicates the depth and breadth of the attacks.

“Do NOT conduct CFPB work using mobile voice calls or text messages,” the CFPB email recommended. The email also stated that staff should only use authorized online collaboration platforms such as Cisco WebEx and Microsoft Teams to make calls and send messages that contain non-public data.

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• Canadian man arrested in connection with Snowflake data breach
• The breach affected hundreds of millions of customers
• This was likely a 'credential stuffing' attack

Canadian authorities have confirmed that an arrest has been made in connection to the significant breach of Snowflake earlier in 2024.

Alexander ‘Connor’ Moucka (aka Waifu and Judische) was taken into custody on October 30 following a request by US law enforcement, and is now due to appear in court. The exact nature of the charges are unknown, as extradition requests are considered confidential state-to-state communications, so both nations declined to comment.

Security firm Mandiant recently confirmed it was still monitoring ‘Judische’, who was still actively targeting software-as-a-service (Saas) organizations up until very recently. The group behind the original attack is said to be primarily from North America, with one member also in Turkey.

Extortion and data theft

Around 165 organizations had their sensitive data stolen in the attack, which used brute force tactics on the cloud storage provider to breach a series of organizations and extort as much as $3 million from them in total.

Snowflake claimed the breach was a result of a credential stuffing attack and did not originate inside its infrastructure. This suggests the attackers purchased login combinations (usually on the dark web) and essentially just tried countless logins until they found one that worked.

The attacks affected millions of people’s data, and breached companies including the likes of AT&T, Santander, and Live Nation Entertainment (Ticketmaster). Ticketmaster alone reported the loss of 500 million people’s data, making this one of the biggest data breaches in history.

Telecoms giant AT&T reportedly paid $370,000 for a member of the hacking team earlier in 2024 to provide evidence that they had deleted the stolen call records for tens of millions of customers.

Via Bloomberg

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AT&T has accused VMware of proposing a staggering 1,050% price increase under its new Broadcom ownership, leading to a legal dispute between the two companies.

The claim was shared in a legal document filed by AT&T, which alleges Broadcom has not honored a previous contract allowing the telecoms giant to extend its support for VMware software by a further two years.

Confirmation of AT&T’s frustration with Broadcom was shared in a letter from AT&T EVP Susan A. Johnson, addressed to Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, shared by The Register.

AT&T faced with 1,050% VMware price hike

In the letter, Johnson called the proposed price hike extreme and unexpected given the companies’ strategic partnership.

AT&T has also raised concerns about the difficulties in migrating away from VMware, despite investigating alternative solutions for nearly a year. Because VMware is deeply integrated into AT&T’s network operations, a migration would prove costly (to the tune of $40-50 million) and time-consuming.

“AT&T has decided to pursue a legal strategy along with a disciplined plan to invest to migrate away, all of which will quickly become public," Johnson added

Despite sharing concerns about being treated unfairly and plans to migrate away from VMware, Johnson said the company would be prepared to “engage in any reasonable offers.”

More broadly, AT&T isn’t the only company to complain about the drastic changes that Broadcom has enacted within its acquired VMware business. Not long after the buyout, VMware perpetual licenses were terminated, and customers became increasingly vocal in the months that followed about their dissatisfaction.

Civo recently confirmed that more than half (52%) of VMware customers were looking to migrate as a result of the turmoil.

Several Broadcom execs, including CEO Hock Tan, have spoken out about the changes in a bid to pacify customers, but these have so far been relatively unsuccessful. A company spokesperson told TechRadar Pro in an email:

"Broadcom strongly disagrees with the allegations and is confident we will prevail in the legal process. VMware has been moving to a subscription model, the standard for the software industry, for several years – beginning before the acquisition by Broadcom. Our focus will continue to be providing our customers choice and flexibility while helping them address their most complex technology challenges.”

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A recently-concluded US government investigation has shed more light on the major AT&T outage that occurred on February 22, 2024 - including revealing a slightly embarassing cause.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) report highlighted the significant impact of the outage, which blocked over 92 million phone calls, including 25,000 attempts to reach 911 emergency services.

The FCC criticized AT&T for not adhering to best practices, such as thoroughly testing, reviewing and approving network changes before implementation.

FCC investigates AT&T’s February 2024 outage

The outage affected 125 million devices across all 50 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Alarmingly, it took more than 12 hours to fully resolve, leaving many without connections during peak hours.

Besides AT&T customers, customers subscribed to providers who use AT&T’s network and those using the network for roaming were also affected. The outage also disrupted public safety communications on the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet).

AT&T acknowledged the outage stemmed from an update relating to a network expansion. The configuration error occurred three minutes after a network change was implemented, causing the network to enter ‘protect mode’ and disconnect all devices.

However, the FCC has accused AT&T of deeper issues, including inadequate peer reviews, insufficient lab testing and a lack of safeguards to prevent such outages.

AT&T has taken steps to prevent future outages, however the FCC has already referred the matter to its Enforcement Bureau for potential violations of its rules. FCC Chairwoman Jessia Rosenworcel emphasized the importance of network reliability:

“When you sign-up for wireless service, you expect it will be available when you need it – especially for emergencies… We take this incident seriously and are working to provide accountability for this lapse in service and prevent similar outages in the future.”

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A poorly protected Snowflake account has reprotedly cost AT&T more than $300,000 following the recent cyberattack against the telecom giant.

A few months ago, it was reported that a threat actor managed to compromise more than 150 company accounts on Snowflake, thanks to their poor password hygiene, and not securing their accounts with multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Among them was AT&T, after a hacker who was reportedly part of the ShinyHunters threat actor group, accessed the company’s Snowflake account, and stole sensitive customer data.

Bitcoin ransom

The data included call and text messaging metadata (but not the contents of the communications), telephone numbers of “nearly all” AT&T’s cellular customers, numbers of customers of other wireless carriers who communicated with AT&T customers in mid-2022, and landline phone numbers of people communicating with AT&T customers during the same timeframe. 

Apparently, hackers could use the data to identify the owners of individual phone numbers. 

At the same time, a different hacker also accessed the same database - John Erin Binns - who later reached out to a security researcher with the alias Reddington, to help facilitate a buyback of the data. These two individuals were apparently asking for $1 million in cryptocurrency, in exchange for permanently deleting the data. AT&T took it down to roughly $300,000, but before the transaction could be made, Binns was arrested in Turkey, for an entirely different cybercrime, allegedly committed in 2021. 

In the end, Reddington facilitated the transaction to the ShinyHunters hacker, in the amount of 5.72 bitcoin (around $359,000 at press time). Multiple researchers confirmed that the transaction had taken place, and that the hackers provided video proof that the entire database was wiped. 

Via Wired

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AT&T has admitted 'tens of millions' of customers were involved in a huge data breach that rocked the telecom titan back in 2022. Although the breach impacted AT&T cellphone customers, the company has since revealed the exposed data did not contain the contents of personal calls and messages, and shouldn't be accesible to the public.

The customer data was downloaded from an AT&T workspace via a third-party cloud platform - all without authorization, of course. The data was made up of "nearly all" AT&T customers' call and text records from May 1, 2022, to October 31, 2022, making it a textbook target for cybercriminals hoping to turn personally identifiable information into a profit via the dark web.

Unfortunately, the records also list the numbers that the affected AT&T customers called and texted, as well as the number of interactions and their durations.

AT&T breach

In a statement AT&T added records from the January 2, 2023 data breach impacted a small number of customers.

As mentioned, the contents of the leaked calls and texts aren't included in the breached data, and also does not include call or text timestamps, sensitive information like Social Security numbers, or personal details like dates of birth.

On July 16, 2024, additional details surfaced citing that the company paid the hackers (who are responsible for the breach) to erase the records. The incident is now also the center of a class-action lawsuit that seeks compensation for affected users. AT&T itself hasn't commented on the lawsuit. However, Bloomberg uncovered the initial complaint and its list of demands – including that the telecommunications company pay damages to victims of the breach. 

WIRED has also revealed that AT&T paid hackers to erase the stolen data. Reportedly, in May this year, AT&T contacted ShinyHunters, a notorious hacking group, and the perpetrators behind the data theft and breach. AT&T asked ShinyHunters to delete the data and record a video of the process as evidence – and then paid the group $370,000 in Bitcoin for doing so.

Unfortunately, a video cannot confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that all traces of the leaked AT&T data have been expunged from the web. Copies may still exist, after all, and valuable datasets like these are ShinyHunters' bread and butter.

The group initially pilfered the records via a Snowflake cloud storage account – primarily because it wasn't secured properly and lacked multi-factor authentication. AT&T isn't the only company that has been targeted by ShinyHunters, however, as Ticketmaster and Santander have also seen Snowflake accounts infiltrated.

What's at stake?

Despite the fact that the leaked AT&T records didn't contain details like names, addresses, and other overt personal information, the company itself has admitted that savvy hackers can still link an individual to their cellphone number without it.

Stolen data and personally identifiable information (PII) is a big business for cybercriminals – they can sell it for a massive profit or use it themselves to commit fraud. So, given the value of this information, cybercriminals are willing to take vague details (like those involved in the AT&T breach) and put them under the microscope to learn more about their potential victims, all so they'll reap a bigger reward in the end.

If a hacker has access to someone's call records, they can sift through them to piece together a startlingly clear picture of that person's digital social life. Who are they talking to and for how long? How many texts are they sending?

Next, cybercriminals often take to social media to round out their victims' profiles, checking out family members, friends, work contacts, and more. They'll try to figure out who the major players in that person's life are. 

Why? Well, ultimately, it's so they can impersonate them or use their details as leverage in their next round of scams. I see a lot of stories about scammers pretending to be friends stuck on the way home from a trip, asking for money to buy gas or a ticket home, for example. 

So, given the scope of the breach and the potential for rebound fraud, it's unsurprising that AT&T customers want to take legal action. 

What happens next?

AT&T has reassured customers that the affected access point has been secured – which is good news. 

The company has also teamed up with law enforcement to sniff out the cybercriminals behind the attack. In fact, one individual has already been caught out and "apprehended"

The company has also stated that it'll be in touch with customers (past and present) to confirm that their data was involved in the leak. So, if you've been an AT&T client at any point since May 2022, you'll want to keep an eye out for an email – just in case.

For anyone who is impacted by the AT&T breach (or for you privacy-oriented folks out there), there are a few things you can do to limit the damage to your overall digital security. 

Firstly, it's well worth changing the password associated with your AT&T account – especially if you use it for other sites and apps. Then, I'd recommend checking out one of the best VPNs available today. A VPN keeps all of your personal data hidden away from prying eyes and nosy third parties, encrypting it as you go about your day-to-day browsing. Plus, our #1 rated VPN, NordVPN, even has handy Threat Protection tools that'll zap pop-up ads and fight off phishing attempts.

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Sure, Samsung just dropped two new folding phones at its July 10, 2024, Galaxy Unpacked event, but the tech giant is also sharing some news about a partnership that will make it easier to repair a bevy of Galaxy smartphones. 

Through the new partnership with AT&T, customers on that wireless carrier will be able to get same-day repair at close to 700 locations across the United States. Those include some Samsung retail spots, like the 837 flagship store in NYC, and a bunch of uBreakiFix by Assurion locations. 

This is a push on Samsung’s “Same Unit Repair” option, meaning that the device you walked in will get repaired versus being swapped for a different unit, and in some cases, it’ll even be a same-day repair. As you might suspect, there are some requirements to meet to be eligible: your device needs to be on AT&T with an active account, and the device needs to be within Samsung’s Standard Limited Warranty.

Samsung also notes that these walk-in, same-day repairs are generally available for more modern devices classified as Galaxy S21 or newer, and the appointments must be completed before 3 PM. The advantage here is that a same-day repair can be easily scheduled through AT&T.

Another benefit is that since the repair is for your current device and it’s not being swapped out for a different one, you likely won’t need to perform a data backup and can get right on your way.

This new repair option for Samsung Galaxy owners joins other authorized repair options, including mailing the device in. Of course, this is a win for AT&T customers, as those on Verizon or T-Mobile don’t yet have this same access or option.

It will be interesting to see if Samsung is interested in working with other carriers, and we’ve reached out to ask them about that.

This new repair option came after Samsung and Best Buy ended their partnership, which let GeekSquad handle authorized repairs in-store. So, if those impacted customers are on AT&T, they’ll be able to unlock a similar repair experience. It also comes after Samsung and iFixIt parted ways for self-service repairs.

But if you’re on AT&T with a Samsung Galaxy phone, your wireless carrier can now help you find a same-day repair spot to get your device back up and running.

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Sometimes, whether you’re in the rugged wilderness or just a place with spotty reception, you’re going to struggle with cell coverage. That might soon be less of a problem if you’re an AT&T customer though, as the company has just announced a plan to provide its “first space-based broadband network direct to everyday cell phones.”

What does that mean in practice? According to AT&T, an agreement has been reached with AST SpaceMobile to use satellites orbiting the Earth to provide cellular service to AT&T’s mobile customers. That should mean you can get service wherever you are on the planet, as you’ll no longer need to rely on a nearby mast or cell tower to provide coverage to your device.

The deal lasts until 2030, and while there’s no information regarding the price, we wouldn’t expect it to be cheap. What we do know is that the first five satellites will be launched from Cape Canaveral this summer, although there’s no word on when AT&T customers will start being able to take advantage of the new service.

Expanding coverage

This is not the first cellular service to offer coverage from space. In 2022, T-Mobile and SpaceX announced they were working together on a similar offering, which became known as Starlink Direct to Cell in October 2023. In January 2024, the program’s first satellites were launched into space.

Apple, meanwhile, has been offering Emergency SOS via Satellite for free with certain devices since 2022. However, this feature only covers emergency calls, not regular communications.

With all these services on offer – and AT&T’s own seemingly on the horizon – you should soon have plenty of options if you want to stay in touch with people even in the remotest of locations. AT&T says its program will be available “in the not-too-distant future,” so we’ll have to hang tight for further announcements – including, hopefully, the price.

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New information regarding the 2021 AT&T breach is emerging, with the company reducing the number of affected individuals by almost a third, from the initial 70 million, down to 51 million. 

AT&T also said it has started notifying victims of the breach, and offered identity theft monitoring and protection services. 

For the uninitiated, back in 2021, privacy blog RestorePrivacy reported that a threat actor was selling a huge database of current and former AT&T customers on a dark web forum. AT&T denied that it was its database, and claimed that its systems were not breached.

Financial information not included

Fast forward to 2024, and a different threat actor leaked the entire database, prompting the same response from the telco giant. However, after multiple media publications independently verified the authenticity and source of the data, AT&T came clean. However, it still didn’t say how the hackers obtained the database.

In any case, the company revised the number of affected individuals, pinning it down to 51,226,382. Apparently, many of the people on the list had duplicate entries.

"The [exposed] information varied by individual and account, but may have included full name, email address, mailing address, phone number, social security number, date of birth, AT&T account number and AT&T passcode," the company said in the breach notification. "To the best of our knowledge, personal financial information and call history were not included. Based on our investigation to date, the data appears to be from June 2019 or earlier."

When asked about the difference in the number of impacted customers, AT&T told BleepingComputer the database appeared to hold many duplicates:

"We are sending a communication to each person whose sensitive personal information was included.  Some people had more than one account in the dataset, and others did not have sensitive personal information.”

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AT&T has acknowledged a data leak impacted 73 million of its current and former customers. News of the data leak was made public in March of this year, after a hacker using the alias ShinyHunters posted an archive of the stolen data to BreachForums, a notorious data leaks site.

AT&T said it is unclear whether the data, which appears to be from 2019 at the latest, originated from AT&T or one of its vendors. It has also not yet been made public how the data was accessed.

The information posted to BreachForums includes customers’ full names, email addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, and AT&T account numbers and passcodes. In light of this, AT&T has reset all passcodes. The telecoms company has said it will be contacting those affected via email or letter, as well as providing complimentary identity theft protection and credit monitoring services if personal info was leaked.

User’s financial information or call history was not included in the leak.

How public is the AT&T data leak? 

Despite AT&T saying that the data was leaked on the dark web, web security consultant and owner of HaveIBeenPwnd.com, Troy Hunt, explained to What The Tech? that the data is on the “clear web”. This means that it is on sites that can be accessed via your regular browser, giving “thousands if not tens of thousands of people” access to the data.

This means that, for the 73 million people affected by the breach, their personal information is easily accessible. Troy Hunt empathized with this struggle, noting: “We cannot go and change our date of birth, changing a social security number is an absolute nightmare. So we have to work on the fact that the data is out there and we’re never going to get it back.” 

Unfortunately, as many people do not take steps to protect their sensitive information until it has been breached, this can be an arduous process. Hunt suggests using identity theft and fraud protection services—something that AT&T has offered the victims of the data breach.

Where was the AT&T data leaked from? 

There is evidence on BreachForum that the data leaked in March 2024 is a repost of a leak shared in 2021. In 2021, AT&T did not confirm whether or not this data was legitimate, and denied that the data came from AT&T, saying that the data posted “d[id] not appear to have come from our systems”.

Despite this, ShinyHunters continued to make claims about the legitimacy of the data posted, saying that they “d[id]n’t care if they d[id]n’t admit”, referring to AT&T.

How to protect your personal data 

As Troy Hunt said, one of the issues with data breaches is the fact that people don’t protect their data until it’s too late. We’ve all done it—most people don’t assume that their personal information will be accessed by hackers and sold to other bad actors on the internet. Unfortunately, with the rate and scale of cyber attacks, your data being leaked has become less of and if and more of a when.

Take me for example—I used Troy Hunt’s own HaveIBeenPwned.com to find out what information about me has been posted on the internet, and found out that my phone number was exposed in a data breach, and my email address has been exposed in two. 

So, with this in mind, it’s important to take steps to protect your identity and data online, including:

Using multi-factor authentication—this can help prevent hackers from gaining access to your accounts, even if your email address is made public.

Not reusing passwords and resetting your passwords if they are exposed in a data breach—this means that even if your username and password is exposed, hackers cannot access any other accounts you use, and even the account that has leaked details.

Investing in identity protection, whether this is on its own or part of an internet security suite—identify protection software can scour the web for data breaches you were involved in, allowing you to take further steps to protect your identity.

American telecommunications behemoth AT&T has finally confirmed the authenticity of the 2021 data breach that spilled sensitive user information on the dark web, and has initiated a mass reset of user passcodes.

Roughly three years ago, privacy blog RestorePrivacy broke the news of a hacker selling sensitive data belonging to more than 70 million AT&T customers. The data allegedly contained people’s names, phone numbers, postal addresses, email addresses, social security numbers, and dates of birth. 

While AT&T initially denied the breach, saying the data wasn’t from the company, the hacker, going by the name “ShinyHunters” said the organization will likely continue denying until they leak it all. 

Mass reset

Surely enough, last month, a seller published the full database, affecting 73 million people - and TechCrunch analyzed the database, confirming its authenticity, and also establishing that it contained user passcodes, prompting a swift alert towards AT&T. 

Passcodes are four-digit numbers that work as the second security layer, and are used to access user accounts. Even though they were encrypted, some researchers argued that it is something that can be worked around. Apparently, there is not enough randomness in the encrypted data, which means that in theory, a threat actor could guess the passcode. 

It seems the threat is more than just theoretical, as AT&T initiated a mass-reset of the passcodes over the weekend.

“AT&T has launched a robust investigation supported by internal and external cybersecurity experts,” the company said in a statement published on Saturday. “Based on our preliminary analysis, the data set appears to be from 2019 or earlier, impacting approximately 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and approximately 65.4 million former account holders.”

“AT&T does not have evidence of unauthorized access to its systems resulting in exfiltration of the data set,” the statement said.

While the telco did confirm the breach, it says that it still doesn’t know where the data came from, whether it was directly from its servers, or from its vendors.

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Write this down, because I’m going to tell you my secret to understanding the US mobile industry for the last 20 years. The answer to everything is 'The Carriers.' Every question, every conundrum. If you want to know why we DO have this, or DON’T have that? The answer is the US carriers: AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. How has Apple managed to achieve monopoly power in the US and draw the ire of the Justice Department? The answer is the US carriers.

One of the strongest points that Apple makes in its rebuttal to the government’s lawsuit is that the government is considering only the US market, but Apple competes on a global scale. In the global market, Apple’s market share is much lower than in the US alone. It owns closer to 20% of the global market, as opposed to more than 60% of the US market.

Why is there such a huge difference? Is it because Samsung is incredibly popular everywhere else in the world? Are Google Pixel phones and Motorola Razr phones catching on like wildfire? Of course not. It’s because there are lots of phones in the rest of the world that you simply cannot buy here in the US.

Half of the Top 10 phone makers don't sell phones here

The top ten phone makers in the world include Apple, Samsung, OnePlus and Motorola. It also includes Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Huawei, and Realme. While Oppo’s subsidiary brand OnePlus sells phones in the US, none of those latter brands are available here. Why not? Check your notes, you wrote down the answer.

It’s because of the US carriers. Okay, we can’t blame the US carriers for the US government’s ban on Huawei products (though the government hasn’t offered specific evidence to support that ban). The rest of the phones, though, are not available in the US because the carriers don’t sell them. You can find them through grey market import channels, but they won’t have a local warranty, and they may not support local networks properly.

It’s unclear why the US carriers don’t sell half of the top phone brands here in the US, and we can only add blind speculation. Is there a political motive, as all of these brands are Chinese? I’ve personally heard from a mobile industry analyst that the US government has in some way influenced the carrier decision to forego selling most new Chinese phones. That analyst wouldn’t go on the record, so I take that possibility with a huge grain of salt.

The other possibility is that it is simply cost-prohibitive for a foreign manufacturer to sell phones here. If you want to sell phones in a US carrier store, you need to work with the carriers. That means sending hundreds of devices to labs for testing, and adjusting everything on the device that fails those stringent tests.

It means a lot more localization work for each phone. The US carriers will also want a marketing commitment, or else the phones will end up on the shelves in the back, behind all the iPhones and Galaxy phones and no-name budget phones with Verizon or AT&T branding.

It is easier for US carriers to sell you an iPhone

The same motivation that keeps the US carriers from selling these competing phone brands is also what keeps the iPhone at the top of the pile. It is very easy for US carriers to sell the iPhone. Apple spends a lot of its own money on marketing, alongside whatever the carriers are spending. There are rewards and incentives for selling more iPhones, especially with AppleCare attached.

Best of all, when you have a problem with your iPhone, you don’t need to call Verizon. You can call Apple. In fact, Apple would probably prefer you call them directly.

Most companies hate customer service calls because they cost a lot of money and don’t result in more sales. Carriers will refuse to stock phones if those phones are going to cause a lot of customer service calls. That’s another reason we don’t see Chinese phones, which tend to have poor localization and language issues, in US carrier stores.

The US carriers buy more iPhones than anybody else

Apple isn’t to blame for its overwhelming market share. Instead, blame its largest customers, the ones that buy so many iPhones that Apple’s dominance is inevitable. Apple’s top customer isn’t you or me. It’s the US carriers. Apple sells millions of phones directly to US carriers, and they sell them to us.

Most people in the US still buy their phone directly from their mobile carrier. While Apple and Samsung both sell directly, and Apple even has a store in your local mall, most iPhone owners in the US bought their phone from AT&T or Verizon or T-Mobile, or one of the smaller (often wholly-owned) networks that buy bandwidth from those three. After all, the carriers give you the best deal on a new phone if you sign up for a long-term contract, and who can afford to pay hundreds upfront these days?

If there is a reason that the Apple iPhone is the dominant phone on the market, the reason is the US carriers. They sell more iPhones than Apple directly, along with the Apple Watches that keep you locked into Apple’s platform. Verizon often gives away a free watch and a free tablet if you connect all of your devices to their network; we see this deal every time a new model is launched.

Not only is Apple not solely responsible for its US market dominance, but it’s also fair to say that the US cellular market could use some scrutiny. After T-Mobile swallowed up Sprint, US customers were left with a much less competitive market.

Instead of going after Apple for dominating the market, the Justice Department should encourage the US mobile networks to offer more options in stores. The rest of the world has far more options, and the global market is more competitive. If the US carriers are the reason we don’t have the same choice as the rest of the world, maybe it’s the US carriers that are the problem, and not Apple.

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A hacker is selling a huge archive on the dark web, claiming it originated from a 2021 data breach at American telecommunications giant AT&T - however the company denies the data originated from its servers.

BleepingComputer reported a threat actor with the alias ShinyHunters posted an ad on the RaidForums for the sale of sensitive data belonging to 71 million AT&T customers.

The database contains people’s names, addresses, mobile phone numbers, birth dates, social security numbers, and other sensitive information. The publication analyzed a sample of the data and confirmed its authenticity. Whether or not the entire database is legitimate, is impossible to determine at this time.

History of breaches

ShinyHunters’s starting price is $200,000, with incremental offers of $30,000. They would sell the database immediately for an offer of $1 million, it was said.

However, when approached by the publication, AT&T said the data wasn’t theirs: "Based on our investigation today, the information that appeared in an internet chat room does not appear to have come from our systems," AT&T told BleepingComputer in 2021. ShinyHunters, on the other hand, responded that they “don’t care if they don’t admit”.

AT&T has a history of malware and data breaches. Roughly a year ago, the company warned millions of its users that some of their sensitive data was exposed in a supply chain cyberattack. Apparently, a marketing vendor was breached a few months earlier, resulting in the theft of AT&T’s data.

In that incident, nine million of its customers were affected, with hackers stealing customer proprietary network information from some wireless accounts. That includes, among other things, the number of lines on an account or wireless rate plan.

Earlier still, in July 2020, news broke that AT&T some employees took bribes to install malware on their network. Two individuals, who were later uncovered to be Muhammad Fahd and Ghulam Jiwani, were charged with paying over $1 million in bribes to several AT&T employees at the telecom’s Mobility Customer Care call center in Washington.

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The reaction to last week's major AT&T network outage in the US last week hasn't died down yet, and we're now getting some details about how affected customers are going to be compensated for the loss of service.

Via a new AT&T support page, the company apologizes for the outage. "We recognize the frustration this outage has caused and know we let many of our customers down," says AT&T. "We understand this may have impacted their ability to connect with family, friends, and others."

To "make it right" with customers, the company is proactively applying a credit to the accounts of those affected. This credit represents "the average cost of a full day of service" – the amount isn't specifically mentioned, but it's reportedly $5 per person. 

If you're on AT&T and you lost service on Thursday, you should see the credit appear in the next one or two bill cycles. AT&T says it's working separately with business customers to reach deals on compensation amounts.

No data leaks

The reactions to the credit offer have been mixed on social media, varying from those describing it as an "insult", to others taking a more philosophical view. Some AT&T customers have pledged to switch carriers after the outage.

AT&T has also published a letter from CEO John Stankey, sent to employees, which goes into a little bit more detail. The letter says Thursday was a "challenging" day, while also expressing confidence that the compensation is "fully manageable" – $5 each for potentially hundreds of millions of customers is a significant sum.

Stankey reiterates what we heard last week: a technical error rather than a cyberattack was to blame for the outage, which lasted for around half a day. According to AT&T, no customer data has been exposed as a result of the problems.

While AT&T seemed somewhat slow off the mark in addressing user concerns last week, it now seems eager to make up for the breakdown in service. AT&T says it's "taking steps to prevent this from happening again in the future".

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We're still reeling from the scale and widespread impact of yesterday's huge AT&T outage, and information about what caused the breakdown in cell coverage is now coming to light. And it seems as though a good old-fashioned technical error was to blame.

"Based on our initial review, we believe that today's outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyberattack," said AT&T in an update posted on its website.

"We are continuing our assessment of today's outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve," the statement continued. Somewhere in the region of 2 million reports were filed on Downdetector yesterday, as the incident progressed.

Spokesperson Jim Greer told the Washington Post that AT&T would continue to monitor the situation. The Post is also reporting that the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Communications Commission are also investigating.

More to come

Yesterday's cell network outage was the biggest in recent memory, with problems apparently starting around 3.30am Eastern Time as the US was waking up. We saw reports of issues across multiple states, and 911 calls were also impacted.

While there were also reports of connection mishaps from Verizon and T-Mobile customers, it seems as though they were mostly related to getting through to people on AT&T – so the main outage seems to have only affected one carrier.

Of course this was a massive inconvenience for AT&T customers, who were unable to make personal or work calls while the incident was happening. AT&T has hinted that some compensation will be offered, but as yet we don't have any details on that.

No doubt there's lots more to come on this as AT&T weighs up what went wrong and how it can stop it from happening again. In the meantime, you might want to make sure you know how to set up Wi-Fi calling on your smartphone.

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A major cellphone outage ravaged the AT&T service in the US on Thursday (and had some knock-on effects for Verizon and T-Mobile customers) leading to thousands of customers complaining about a lack of mobile signal and internet. Some 12 hours later, AT&T reported it had restored cellular service to all customers.

The issues started at around 3.30am ET, according to Downdetector with AT&T seemingly the hardest hit. Other services like Verizon had similar down reports but it's now believed those were mostly due to other carrier customers trying to reach those on the non-functional AT&T network. The main hotspots for issues were in Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston, though customers from numerous other states took to X (formerly Twitter) to report outages.

After initially offering little information about the outage (or even an acknowledgment on its homepage), AT&T started responding to customers on social media and posting regular updates on its news site. At 5:10PM ET, the company posted this message:

"We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them. Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future."

For its part, DownDetector showed AT&T (and all other networks) operating at normal levels.

AT&T has now released a statement explaining that the outage was caused by "the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack."  

Read on for all the details of how the outage started, bloomed, was recognized, and eventually managed and stopped.

AT&T the hardest hit

Welcome to this liveblog on the major cell phone network outage that's mainly hitting AT&T, but also Verizon, T-Mobile and some of their related MVNOs (mobile virtual network operator) like Cricket Wireless and FirstNet.

As you can see above from DownDetector, this biggest hit appears to be AT&T – with the number of reported outages from frustrated customers spiraling upwards towards 40,000. The problems started at around 3.38am ET and are mainly hitting Chicago, Houston, Dallas and Atlanta, though many more cities are also affected.

The reports of outages keep coming

Our US Editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff has posted about the outages on X (below) and is getting some more live info on where the main hotspots are.

Again, it's AT&T customers that appear to be the worst hit, with the network seemingly still down in Austin, Western Connecticut, Florida and Texas. There are some anecdotal signs of recovery on T-Mobile, but its DownDetector graph of reported issues is still on the rise.

No official comment from AT&T – yet

So far, we haven't had any official comment from AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile about the network outages that are continuing to hit many customers, but we'll continue to chase them up.

On social media, AT&T are acknowledging individual complaints (below) but asking customers to DM them for a resolution. Hopefully we'll get a broader official update soon about what's causing the problems and an estimate of timescales. 

Because the issues appear to be getting worse, according to Downdetector, particularly on AT&T, which has now peaked at over 50,000 complaints.

Emergency services post about the outages

The AT&T outages are so widespread that some emergency services have started posting guidance in some of the worst-hit areas. The San Francisco Fire Department published the below on X (formerly Twitter), stating that its 911 center is still operational and that it's monitoring the situation.

Meanwhile, an official Facebook page for Powell County in Kentucky has stated that it's currently juggling a power outage and the AT&T cellphone issues, which are preventing customers from calling 911. Let's hope both of those get sorted soon. 

A recap of the network outage

Just woken up to find your cell phone service looking something like the above? Here's what we know so far. 

The biggest hit network appears to be AT&T, with reports of issues starting at around 3.30am ET on Downdetector – this number has now gone over 64,000 reports, with the hotspots being Houston, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta (see map below). Cricket Wireless, which is owned by AT&T, has also just hit over 12,000 reports of outages. 

While customers on those two networks are undoubtedly the worst hit, Verizon and T-Mobile are also showing spikes in reports of 'no signal' and 'mobile internet' issues. These problems all started at around the same time (3.30am ET) and in similar cities, with Houston, Chicago and Dallas again being the source of complaints on Verizon and T-Mobile.

We're expecting to get some official comment from AT&T and other networks soon, as these issues don't appear to be going away.

The networks start to respond

AT&T has now acknowledged the issue, according to CNN. An AT&T spokesperson said in a statement: "Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”

Meanwhile, Verizon and T-Mobile have apparently denied that they have any issues, despite reports to the contrary on Downdetector. A T-Mobile statement, again given to CNN, claimed "we did not experience an outage", while Verizon said that "Verizon’s network is operating normally".

Apparently, Verizon's issues have mainly be reported when customers had issues calling or texting friends on "another carrier". It's fairly obvious that this other carrier is AT&T, though on Downdetector Verizon and T-Mobile both still have around 4,000 and 2,000 customer reports respectively of issues, some of which say they're getting "no signal". 

AT&T technicians working "round the clock"

As #attdown starts to trend on X (formerly Twitter), AT&T's inundated social media crew are starting becoming a little forthcoming in their replies to frustrated customers (see below).

While the previous guidance was to direct message the AT&T account on X, some replies are now acknowledging that "there's an outage in your area" and that "technicians are working round the clock to get this fixed".

The problems started over five hours ago now, so let's hope that doesn't mean it'll take another five hours to fix them.

Verizon is talking to customers

No doubt the level of Verizon issues is far less than those being reported by ATT customers, but even if Verizon is not speaking publicly about these nationwide outages, it is hearing from its customers, and starting to respond.

Verizon customers on X (formerly Twitter) are now complaining their service is out and that some phones are reporting "SOS," which means there's no network.

Verizon's replies are pretty lighthearted at the moment, with no indication that there are any larger issues. In one case, a Verizon representative named Andi wrote:
"We know that dealing with service issues can be frustrating, but we are here to help. Can you share more with us about what you are experiencing?"

This was similar to another response where the Verizon rep asked the customer to describe what they were experiencing. We could help: They're experiencing an outage and want to know what's up.

Verizon: Verizon's network is operating normally

When reached for comment by TechRadar, a Verizon representative gave us this statement: 

"Verizon's network is operating normally. Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier. We are continuing to monitor the situation."

That comment does indicate that there were issues but not how widespread, nor the cause. Worth noting, though, that they are monitoring the situation. And as we noted earlier, Verizon is responding to customer complaints on social media.

ATT knows there's a problem

While ATT has yet to issue a formal statement on its growing network problem, it's finally responding to customer complaints on X (formerly Twitter).

When ATT customer "It's_Kahleaa" posted on X "I just want to text my mom @ATT", the service quickly replied with an apology and added, "some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them."

It also recommended she use Wi-Fi calling until service is restored. That last bit of advice is useful. Many people forget that their providers often support Wi-Fi calling. They could also use FaceTime or a similar Internet-based video service to make a connection.

AT&T admits there's a "nationwide network incident"

AT&T has gone a bit further than its previously conservative social media posts on the X (formerly Twitter) post above.

It states that there's "a nationwide network incident impacting multiple services", with Cricket Wireless (which is owned by AT&T) hoping to "restore service to full capacity as quickly and safely as possible".

While no official theories have been offered by AT&T on what's causing the issues, a "nationwide network incident" gives us an idea. 

Meanwhile, AT&T has now told us that "some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored.”

What's causing the outages?

AT&T's official statement to us below doesn't contain any information about the "nationwide network incident" that its social media team posted about on X (formerly Twitter). What could that be referring to?

Some wilder speculation has pointed to possible interference from recent solar flares, one of which peaked today at 1:32am ET according to NASA. But a more likely explanation is more humdrum network problems. 

Lee McKnight, associate professor in the iSchool at Syracuse University, told us: "The most likely cause is a cloud misconfiguration. Which is a fancy word for saying human error. I was reviewing this exact issue in class yesterday" he said. 

Meanwhile, an anonymous industry source similarly told CNN that the issue is likely down to peering, which is how cellphone services hand off calls from one network to the next. Still, right now, this is all just speculation until we get an official explanation from AT&T and others.

Are the problems easing?

The number of outages reported on Downdetector for AT&T, Cricket Wireless and other networks are all trending downwards right now, which could be a cause for cautious optimism. Richard Young, a Verizon spokesperson, has also said that the AT&T-related issues are "close to being resolved".

But we did also see signs of recovery earlier before another spike in reports, and Downdetector does also only track self-reported issues – which means it's a useful, but not comprehensive, overview of what's happening. 

Still, let's hope the outages have peaked, and we look forward to seeing a more positive statement from AT&T that goes beyond stating that it's "working urgently to restore service" (which is still it's last official word on the problems).

Will AT&T customers be compensated?

If you're one of the many unfortunate people to be hit by AT&T's outages today, you may be wondering if (and how) you'll be able to get compensated for the lack of service.

Well, the company's social media team (below) has stated that "AT&T will be making the necessary adjustments for the missing service due to this inconvenience once the issue is totally fixed."

What isn't yet clear is if this process will be automatic or if you'll need to report the issues. We're confirming that with AT&T, but for now you can find the company's customer care numbers on its Wireless Support page and also check for known outages on AT&T's outages page.  

The issues have been big enough for AT&T to post the banner above clarifying that it's trying to fix them.

AT&T's site for network help is... down

Somewhat fittingly, the website that AT&T is now pointing affected customers towards for updates is now down – most likely from a surge of clicks.

On X (formerly Twitter), AT&T is telling customers looking for more info on today's cellphone issues to go to: http://go.att.com/networkupdate

Unfortunately, this is giving us an error message, but hopefully it'll be back soon.

AT&T just issued a new statement on the widespread network outage that has taken down tens of thousands of customers' wireless service, as reported to DownDetector and other monitoring sites.

At 11:15AM EST, an update was posted on AT&T's website that says: "Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. Our network teams took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored. We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers."

As of 12:59PM EST, about 10,000 people were reporting an AT&T service disruption on DownDetector, which backs up AT&T's statement that the company had restored a substantial portion of its network by the early afternoon on the east coast.

Frustrated at your wireless service's disruption this afternoon? TechRadar's EIC Lance Ulanoff explores what could have happened, and how the big wireless networks — even those like Verizon who claimed their network were operating normally throughout — need to heed the warning sign this outage is highlighting.

As of 15 minutes ago, DownDetector is still reporting over 6,000 people experiencing wireless service disruption several hours after reports first started at around 4AM EST.

While we still don't know the exact cause of the outage, given the severity of the disruption and how long it is taking to resolve, there are going to be a lot of questions that need answering when this is over.

I'm not liking that little tick back up at the tail end there, but that's probably just me.

If you want to get a sense of how the outage has been impacting people on the ground, DownDetector's front page is a fascinating demonstration. The main AT&T network outage in the chart above is mountain of red in the back, starting just before 5AM EST.

Everything else layered over that initial chart are apps and services like Apple Support, Spectrum, Xfinity, Google, Gmail, Starlink (!?), and DoorDash. As everyone slept through the early false peak at around 5:30AM, once everyone starts going to work in the morning and none of their apps work and they don't know why, they're thinking the problem is the app itself and not realizing its the whole network. 

So, they report that DoorDash is down, or Facebook, or Gmail, so ultimately, the chart above is a real-time snapshot of how this network outage has messed a whole lot of things up, even things that wouldn't seem to be connected.

But that's the thing about networks. We're increasingly connected in ways that we don't appreciate, and a disruption in the wireless network of a single network provider ripples through everyone's lives in ways both large and small.

It looks like AT&T's network is mostly back online, but there are still more than 3,600 reports as of 2:26PM EST. The sharp decrease in reported issues seems to have plateaued slightly in the last hour, but that might have more to do with the scale of the chart, which hit a peak of just over 74,000 reports. Whatever the technicians are doing seems to have patched whatever the major problem was, but as service comes back in NYC and I'm able to contact friends around the country, the scale of this outage really is enormous.

Digging into DownDetector's methodology, a single user can only report a problem on a service once every 24 hours, so any subsequent reports about that service aren't counted in the updated figures. So what these down detector charts mean is that only the rate of new reporting is slowing. 

So, if you have a million people who report their service has been disrupted at 1PM, you'll see that massive spike, but if the disruption persists for those users who already reported, that ongoing loss of service won't show up in these charts. Meaning that while the tracking chart shows a marked decrease, it might not mean that it's over for a lot of folks.

Adding up all the reports on the tracker, it looks like almost 2 million people have reported service disruption in the past 12 hours, and the updated figured don't mean that all but 3,600 of them have had their service restored. There's no real way to know that until we get an update from AT&T. 

And those are just the ones who initiate a report on DownDetector's website. Once the dust settles, we'll probably get a more solid number for how many people were impacted, but this is the largest service outage I have every seen that wasn't a full on blackout.

Just in from AT&T: "We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them. Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future."

AT&T didn't say what it believes caused the network disruption nor did it give any details on what steps it took or might be taking to remedy the root cause of today's outage, but without a doubt government regulators will be getting involved, if they haven't already, so there will be a lot of pressure to find out what happened and disclose it sooner rather than later. We'll keep following this story though and bring you anything new that we learn.

Good morning. We're still picking our way through the aftermath of yesterday's AT&T outage and will be bringing you further updates as we have them.

We do now have some idea of what it was that caused the problems, at least – and it seemingly wasn't a cyber attack (or a solar flare). 

A post on AT&T's Network Update page states that: "Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack. We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve."

So, simple user error, by the sounds of it.

The Washington Post also quotes spokesperson Jim Greer as saying that AT&T would continue to assess the outage, and that service was restored to all customers by about 3 p.m ET.

Looking to upgrade your phone this January? AT&T's current batch of phone deals offers some great choices across a diverse range of devices.

Take the latest Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus, for example. This stunning flagship is currently available with a massive trade-in rebate of up to $1,000 - a huge discount that effectively renders the device free. This device hasn't even been released yet, but you can already line up a significant deal by trading in any Samsung phone in any condition. Unlike with other trade-in deals in the past, this one is exceptionally easy to get a full rebate.

If you're not set on that trade-in, then this week's best AT&T deals have plenty of other great options, too. Both the iPhone 14 and Google Pixel 8 are available for just $5.99 and $10.99 per month alongside an unlimited data plan, respectively - a significant discount versus paying for the devices upfront. In the case of the iPhone 14, this deal brings the device back down to the lowest price we've ever seen at AT&T with a promotion that matches the one from Black Friday in November. 

Today's best phone deals at AT&T

Want to see what else is available this week? Head on over to our main cell phone deals page for plenty more options from other leading carriers and retailers.

Amazon may eventually offer Amazon Prime customers cheap or even free cellular service, according to a report from Bloomberg (via Yahoo). If true, the company would buy network capabilities from T-Mobile, Verizon, or even Dish Network’s Boost Infinite network and act as its own mobile virtual network operator, a so-called MVNO strategy. Amazon denies that this is happening. 

Bloomberg says that Amazon could buy airtime and offer it for $10 per month or less to Amazon Prime customers. The company might even offer cellular service to customers who don’t subscribe to Prime. This pricing would significantly undercut even the most aggressive cellular plans in the US right now. Amazon Prime currently costs $14.99 per month or $139 per year. 

Unlimited prepaid plans on the major US cellular networks run around $60/month for a single line of service, and restrictions often apply. Plans only get cheaper when you add more lines. Google Fi, an MVNO service run by Google, costs $50 per month for a single line, but can be reduced to $20 per month if you have four lines of service. It is unclear how Amazon would handle families under a possible Amazon Prime MVNO.

This is still a rumor even if it makes a lot of sense

Because of the enormous sensitivity that must be involved, no party will fess up to the possible deal. Amazon denies any mobile offering, telling Bloomberg that it is “exploring adding even more benefits for Prime members, but don’t have plans to add wireless at this time.” The mobile carriers that might sell airtime to Amazon also declined to comment, except for T-Mobile. 

A T-Mobile spokesperson says:

“Amazon is a great partner to T-Mobile in many areas, and we are always interested in working more closely with our cross-town neighbors in new ways. However, we are not in discussions about inclusion of our wireless in Prime service, and Amazon has told us they have no plans to add wireless service.”

The secrecy makes sense, because this deal would be very disruptive. Right now the US mobile market lacks competition among the carriers. Ever since T-Mobile engulfed Sprint, we’ve had three carriers offering very similar plans at similar price points.

There are occasionally unique deals on new phones. Carriers also make partnerships with streaming services and offer bundles, so you might get Disney or Apple TV or Paramount Plus with your mobile plan. Amazon Prime has even been offered as a bundle option on US carrier plans, including the now-defunct Sprint.

While numerous MVNO brands have come and gone over the years, none have offered serious competition to the larger nationwide networks that control the cell towers. Some of the largest brands, like Boost Mobile and Metro, have been swallowed up by nationwide networks and used as a prepaid brand.

Amazon would offer unique competition in many ways. It already has a built-in subscriber base paying for services. It already has a robust sales channel for products like connected mobile devices. It manages returns, service, and warranty partnerships. These are usually major roadblocks to entry in the mobile network space, but Amazon has almost every base covered.

One thing remains steadfast – the carriers are in control

That said, Amazon doesn’t own cellular towers. There have been talks of Amazon building out a constellation-type satellite network, which could theoretically drive a mobile network, but that hasn’t happened yet. If Amazon, or any company, wants to become a mobile network operator, it needs to buy airtime from a major nationwide provider. 

The carriers are not fans of giving up control, no matter how large the partner. When Verizon bundles Disney Plus with its monthly plan, you are still buying your cellular plan from Verizon. We don’t see Disney making the sale, offering you Verizon service if you subscribe to Disney Plus. 

Even Apple hasn’t tried to step a toe into the mobile network battle arena. If Amazon offers mobile service with Amazon Prime, the big shakeup would be wrestling control over US customers from the US carriers. The US carriers are incredibly powerful and don’t give up without a fight.

Verizon refused to sell the iPhone for years because Apple wouldn’t give Verizon control over the software. Until the iPhone 4, every iPhone was an AT&T exclusive in the US because Apple wouldn’t load Verizon’s VZ Navigator or even a basic MyVerizon account app. Apple wouldn’t give Verizon any control, so Verizon simply refused to sell the hottest smartphone the world had ever seen. For years. And years.

Eventually, Apple beat a US carrier at its own game, and it never happened again. Every other phone company, from Samsung to Google to Motorola, all bend to the will of the US carriers. Every phone includes carrier software, and some are still locked down to a carrier network.

Amazon and the major networks will deny this is happening until the day it happens, but it makes a lot of sense, and though I’m wary of Amazon’s power, I’m also tired of the triopoly hold on US mobile networks. Three networks isn’t enough.

There hasn’t been enough competition on price or products. Amazon is already taking my money for Prime Video and free shipping. If it can offer a mobile plan for a bit more, the US carriers will need to fight very hard to win me back.

Criminals have discovered a way to break into email accounts provided by AT&T and is using that to access victim's cryptocurrency exchange accounts and steal their cryptos.

An unnamed tipster talking to TechCrunch revealed how a group of hackers uncovered how to crack email addresses hosted on att.net, sbcglobal.net, bellsouth.net, and other domains from the same provider - AT&T.

Apparently, this group accessed AT&T’s internal network and has the ability to create mail keys for pretty much any user.

AT&T reacts

Mail keys are a type of credential that allows the user to log into their accounts via email clients, such as Outlook, without needing a password. Once they access the inbox, they can request a password change for the crypto account, and after that, they can pull virtually everything found in those accounts.

The tipster even gave a list of people who were allegedly targeted this way, and who confirmed to the publication that the story is true. Victims may need to consider using the best identity theft protection to keep themselves safe.

Giving credence to the story is also AT&T spokesperson Jim Kimberly, who told TechCrunch that the company did spot someone creating secure mail keys without authorization.

"We have updated our security controls to prevent this activity,” Kimberly said. “As a precaution, we also proactively required a password reset on some email accounts,” the spokesperson said.

The company did not say how many people were affected by this incident, but it did say that it locked some email accounts out of caution.

“This process wiped out any secure mail keys that had been created,” the spokesperson added.

The problem doesn’t seem to be that new, either, as one of the victims said the attacks have been happening “repeatedly since November 2022”. Another victim said they lost more than $130,000.

• Keep your business safe with the best firewalls for small business

Via: TechCrunch

The only thing more surprising than learning that Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds had purchased an ownership stake in the new Mint Mobile was learning that his new network had some of the best mobile deals in the US mobile market. 

T-Mobile acquired the MVNO last month, and the first changes since then actually seem positive for new and existing customers. Here’s why Mint Mobile is still an astonishingly good deal. 

Mint Mobile has always run on T-Mobile’s network, but its offering was somewhat unique, halfway between a Prepaid wireless and Postpaid wireless plan. Customers can buy three, six, or twelve months in advance, and the more you buy up front, the cheaper the plan costs. 

Mint Mobile’s cheapest plan is an admirable $15 per month, if you pay $180 up front for the full year. For that price you get unlimited data, and up to 4GB of network use on the faster 5G and 4G LTE network. You can even use your phone as a mobile hotspot without an extra fee, but that data comes out of your monthly 4GB cap. After you run out of data, you just get much slower network access.

No other major US carrier offers a plan so inexpensive, even for a prepaid plan. Both AT&T and Verizon offer prepaid plans with a data cap. AT&T will give you 5GB of data, including faster 5G networking, for $30. Verizon offers a 15GB cap on its smallest prepaid plan, and you pay $45.

The big problem is that both of those plans charge extra if you run out of data, they don’t simply slow you down to 2006 network speeds.

Perhaps noticing what Mint Mobile offers, AT&T also has a prepaid plan that lets you pay for up to a year in advance. You can pay $300 for the year, or $25/month equivalent, and get 16GB of data instead of just 5GB. You get a lot more data for less if you pay up front.

T-Mobile is giving every Mint Mobile user more data

Maybe this is why T-Mobile has announced it will be improving the Mint Mobile offering. Subscribers on the 4GB plan will now get 5GB. Mint used to offer 10GB per month for $20, or 15GB per month for $25 if you pay a full year up front, similar to AT&T. Now you get 15GB or 20GB per month for the same price. 

On AT&T you get 16GB per month, but on Mint you get 20GB per month for the same yearly price. 

For subscribers on an unlimited plan, the amount of high-speed hotspot data you can use before Mint slows you down has increased. Now you can use up to 10GB of hotspot on 5G and 4G LTE networks. Other subscribers still draw hotspot data from their monthly data cap. 

New customers will find the deal available this week, and existing customers don’t need to do anything. Your cell plan will automatically get more data. It’s common for cell carriers to leave existing subscribers out of new deals, so this is great news for Mint Mobile users. 

You don’t need to pay for a full year of Mint Mobile up front. If you only want to buy three months in advance, you still only pay $45. That’s the price Verizon charges for 15GB of data on its cheapest prepaid plan, with no discount for paying for a bunch of months in advance. It’s apparent that the big carriers have their eye on Mint Mobile and are aggressively circling its price options.

What makes Mint Mobile the clear winner is that its 20GB monthly plan is a red herring. If you buy only three months at a time, the unlimited plan is cheaper. Even for a full year, unlimited data costs only $60 more than the cheaper plan with a data limit. For $360 you get a year of unlimited 5G, or for $300 you get 20GB per month. If you run out, the network runs slower, you don’t get charged extra.

More data for a lot less money, so what is Mint missing?

Streaming video is a bit of a question mark across all major carriers. On Mint Mobile, the network may try to 'optimize' your video experience, ie. downgrade the resolution to SD content to conserve data. 

We spoke with Mint Mobile CEO Aron North and he confirmed that 4K video is still available. For instance, "Any Mint user who goes to YouTube and manually switches video to 2160 will see the video at 2160," North tells us. Of course, that video will consumer considerably more data. 

Among the larger networks, only AT&T and T-Mobile, on the most expensive monthly plans, will let you stream in full 4K glory. If you pay anything less, video quality suffers. 

The other things that Mint Mobile doesn’t offer are bundles of streaming services and subscription services that only confuse your budget. Verizon throws in a fruit salad of Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Hulu, and Disney Plus.

T-Mobile currently gives you Netflix and Apple TV Plus, or possibly Paramount Plus, depending on your plan.

It’s smart for Mint Mobile to forgo these bundles, as they only confuse customers, especially when it’s time to switch. It’s easy to abandon your carrier for a better deal, only to remember a month later that your monthly plan was paying for your Amazon Prime Video subscription.

Ryan Reynolds helped T-Mobile make its original buyout announcement, and the company said that Reynolds would remain in the same capacity. Hopefully we won't lose those great Mint Mobile commercials. Even though T-Mo aims to take ownership from the MCU’s Merc with a Mouth, it’s good to see that Mint Mobile is staying friendly to customers.

I didn’t inherit Mom’s Samsung Galaxy S4, I relieved her of it. After she passed away, I rummaged through it, hoping to unearth a trove of memories. Sadly, as I’ll explain, there was little to see. Her old phone opened fresh wounds. I’ve finally been able to find value in the haunted old device, but it also started me thinking about what will happen to my smartphone when I’m gone. 

Have you considered what will happen to your phone when someone after you inherits it? What will they find? What will it say about you? This is a fairly new question, maybe even born of my Generation X. Frankly, folks younger than me still think themselves immortal, so they aren’t worried about it. For folks older than me, phones haven’t endeared themselves enough to carry cherished inner lives. 

My phone knows more than I expected to tell it

When I grew up, I didn’t worry about which possessions might survive me, other than some photo albums and yearbooks. Nothing was so important. Now I worry about my kid and my pets. My kid’s smart, so I worry more about my pets. I’ve always wanted to keep a parrot but they outlive their owners, and I don’t know anyone who wants to inherit a parrot. 

As for secrets, I never kept a diary, but these days my phone keeps exponentially more personal information than a diary could, with little effort on my part. I failed at journaling, because my phone basically records my life, my daily thoughts, and my dreams. 

My messages tell the story of my relationships with everyone I know. My photos describe the places I’ve been, the things I’ve experienced. I’ve kept track of the most interesting food I’ve eaten, the live shows I’ve seen, and every amazing city I’ve visited. That’s a diary, whether I intend it or not. 

I have a sticky note on my phone with a running list of standup comedy jokes that I may someday write if I ever drop what I’m doing to become a standup comic. I hope we all have sticky notes like this. I also have one with ideas for novel-length books. I have one with a list of things I would buy if I won $10,000,000.

I can’t imagine leaving behind a diary that paints a picture so detailed as my smartphone. With the right technology and an evil scientist [a SmartphoneClone-inator, anyone?], my phone could be used to create a doppelganger that could replace me and live out my life. My friends would never know. They would probably even like Phone-Phil better because I don’t share my most despairing thoughts with my tech. Phone-Phil would be an optimist, for sure.

The reason my Mom's phone was void of her life

When I inherited Mom’s phone – when I took the phone away from her – I had some hope of finding the same internal life on her phone, but with Mom at the heart. What delights had she eaten that I had never seen? What did she want to remember from all of the places she’d visited?

What sticky notes keep a running list to remind her of the person she might be?

Does this seem invasive? I was invading. I felt I had the right. I was looking for Mom, the real Mom because I’d lost her painfully over the last few years. What replaced her redefined her. I wanted to reclaim Mom as I knew her. I thought I would find her in her phone, but I was disappointed. 

My mother was in her early 60s when she learned she had Alzheimer’s disease. That’s very young for the disease to appear. It may have been present earlier, undiagnosed. It’s a hard disease to detect because it looks like so many other things, and you can only truly diagnose Alzheimer’s after someone has passed away when you can look at brain tissue. 

It’s also an especially cruel disease if you develop it at a younger age, as my mother did. It moves faster, which is terribly ironic. If you get Alzheimer’s when you are old, you have to live with it longer. If you get it when you are young, you are taken from yourself and your loved ones even sooner. 

I’m a tech geek. I want to solve my problems with technology. I wanted to solve her problems with tech, and early on in her disease, I hoped that her smartphone might actually make life easier for her. She knew how to use it by instinct to take photos, answer the phone, and read messages. I thought that having a phone would help. I was mistaken. 

I tried to engage Easy Mode on her Galaxy phone. This locks apps in place. It makes the buttons and text bigger. I don’t remember all of the promises Easy Mode made back then, but it wasn’t ready for Mom. 

Things went wrong. I finally relieved Mom of the stress of her smartphone when she complained that the buttons had stopped working. I tried to troubleshoot and found the strangest compilation of problems. 

She had taken a screenshot of her home screen by accident. Then, she made the screenshot of her home screen the wallpaper for her home screen. If she moved to a new window, the apps seemed to remain in place, because they weren’t actually apps. They were a screenshot of her apps. 

Also, her clock now showed two different times. Notifications overlapped in strange ways. Worst of all, though, was that she wasn’t even tapping the apps on her home screen. She had opened her photo gallery and was looking at the screenshot, thinking it was her home screen. She was tapping on an image. Of course, nothing worked. 

It's easy to get phones wrong, and hard to right again

I thought about switching her to something different. Something like an easier-to-use Jitterbug phone, or even an Apple iPhone. While I’m a tech enthusiast, fond of my incredibly complex Galaxy S23 Ultra, I did not have a great experience with Samsung phones, or Android phones, while helping Mom struggle with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. 

I don’t think any complex, touchscreen phone is ready for the challenge. There are too many ways you can screw things up simply by pressing the wrong thing, or by pressing the right thing in the wrong way.

I gave Mom the phone in Easy Mode, with limitations on what she could change. Phones have plenty of accessibility features built-in for people who understand their own needs. You can improve your experience with audio, visual, and tactile feedback settings. If you know what needs to change on your phone, you might find a way to change it. 

I’m not sure phones are ready for users who suffer from Alzheimer’s and dementia, and who may not understand what has gone wrong, or how to fix it. I truly fear for future generations of smartphone users who will have to manage modern smartphones with decreasing mental capabilities caused by aging, COVID, and other issues. 

It was sadly a phone that reflected its owner

I took Mom’s phone from her, and she was relieved. The phone set high expectations of her. If she gave up her phone, she couldn’t be chastised for not answering, or confused about who was calling. We were all happy when I took her phone, and it went to me because I’m the phone kid. My sister got to hold her jewelry. I got her old smartphone. 

I put her phone in a drawer in my father’s house and didn’t bother with it. She passed away just over a year later. I won’t recount the sequence of events, but it was sudden and it was also expected, as happens with Alzheimer’s when it attacks someone as young as Mom. 

Eventually – I’m not sure when – I unlocked Mom’s old phone. I was the one who set her lock screen password. My sister and I kept a running list of passwords we set for her in the past few years, and one of our email addresses was always the recovery address.

I just deleted the Gmail app. I didn’t care to read through her old emails. I am sure Mom didn’t have any serious or deep conversations over email, and she also didn’t imagine email would be her surviving record. I let it go, for somebody else to find.

Her photo gallery made me sad. There was nothing interesting, no photos I hadn’t seen that I would want to share with the family. They were photos of Mom struggling. There were so many selfies with confused looks, like she didn’t want the camera to be on, and she pressed the button to take a photo instead of the button to shut it off.

I tucked the phone into a box, along with a bunch of other old phones. I recycled the battery, so the phone was lifeless. I figured it would be a relic, but not nostalgic. There wasn’t anything I needed to see again, I just didn’t want to toss it. It felt like a waste to recycle it for nothing.

You'll give me HOW MUCH for this old phone?!

Four years pass. Along comes an AT&T deal offering $1,000 for trade towards a Galaxy S23, one of the best Galaxy S23 deals since the phone launched. You can give them a Samsung Galaxy phone from any year, in any condition (they say, but read the fine print yourself before you trade). 

Since I worked at Samsung for more than six years, you’d think I’d have a bunch of old phones lying around, but that’s not the case. I started with Samsung just before the Galaxy S2. Until I left, just before the Galaxy Note 8, every phone I got from Samsung belonged to Samsung. When I left the company, they remained in a drawer at my desk. 

Okay, many drawers across many desks. I got a lot of phones. But I didn’t own any of those Samsung phones, and even with an employee discount, I didn’t buy Galaxy phones I could now trade. 

Is it weird to trade Mom’s old phone for something new? The Galaxy S23 Ultra is the best phone you can buy today. In a few months, that title will belong to another phone. In a few years, we won’t even be using phones anymore. I’m giving up Mom’s last phone for a fleeting flagship that will be inevitably obsolete.

I won’t get sentimental over a new phone. I fully expect to trade this phone in a year for the next Galaxy S24 Ultra, or possibly even a Galaxy Z Fold 5 or Galaxy Z Flip 5 in August, if those phones really blow my mind. Now that I have an expensive phone, I can trade it for the next model and pay only a fraction of the cost. It’s tricky; I’ll explain it when we get there.

In return, I’ll have a three-year commitment to AT&T to pay off the phone. If I leave after a year, I still owe them two-thirds of the cost, but also I got one-third of the price cut. I get a new phone in exchange for a phone that caused me sadness and had no value.

Mom would hate my new phone as much as her old one

I will take a moment to laugh at the fact that I bought a brand new Galaxy S23 Ultra, the most complicated, feature-packed, customizable phone I’ve ever used, in exchange for a 10-year-old phone that consternated Mom, even in Easy Mode. I’m using a phone I consider the best, and for her, it would have been the absolute worst. 

She’d be happier knowing that I found value in her old phone. She would have thought it ridiculous to keep it in a drawer if I could get $1,000 for it. She wouldn’t have enjoyed my new phone, but she knows that complicated technology makes me happy. She’s my Mom. She wants what’s best for me.

American telecommunications giant AT&T has warned millions of its users that some of their sensitive data had been exposed in a supply chain cyber-incident.

As per a BleepingComputer report, the data breach is a result of a hacking incident against an AT&T marketing vendor that happened in January 2023. 

Now, the company sent out warnings to approximately nine million of its customers that some of their sensitive data was accessed by an unauthorized third party. 

Social Security Numbers intact

"Customer Proprietary Network Information from some wireless accounts was exposed, such as the number of lines on an account or wireless rate plan," AT&T told the publication. "The information did not contain credit card information, Social Security Number, account passwords or other sensitive personal information. We are notifying affected customers."

The notification did not state exactly how many people were affected by the breach, but the company did tell the media that “9 million wireless accounts” were compromised.

Customer first names, wireless account numbers, wireless phone numbers, as well as email addresses, were exposed, the company added.

"A small percentage of impacted customers also had exposure of rate plan name, past due amount, monthly payment amount, various monthly charges and/or minutes used. The information was several years old," AT&T further stated.

The company confirmed that this was a supply chain attack and that its systems remain uncompromised. Furthermore, it added that the data taken is mostly linked to device upgrade eligibility. Be that as it may, the company did notify the police of the incident.

"We have notified federal law enforcement about the unauthorized access of your CPNI as required by the Federal Communications Commission," the company told its customers. "Our report to law enforcement does not contain specific information about your account, only that the unauthorized access occurred.”

If you think your sensitive data has been stolen or used against you, then using the best identity theft protection service can help.

• These are the best firewalls right now

Via: BleepingComputer

Finding the best home internet provider in your area is a highly subjective undertaking. With so many different factors determining the strength and reliability of your connection, it can sometimes be daunting to make your final selection. That's why we're rounding up all the best brands to watch out for when switching your WiFi and broadband provider - so you know which names you can trust in the mix of offers. 

We've created a comparison chart with all the different major factors such as speed, bundle options, price, and coverage to help you find the best internet service that's tailored to your needs. All you need to do is enter your zipcode below and choose which speed you'd prefer, and you'll be able to compare the top internet providers depending on your area.  You'll also be able to select bundle options which include phone and TV that you can bundle with your internet service.

The best internet service providers

If you're still unsure on what internet provider you need, we've answered some common questions below to help you out. Whether you're uncertain on what speed you need, interested in fiber internet or want information on bundled plans, we've got you covered below with our guide to the best internet provider near you.

What’s the best internet service provider near me?

Your location is the most critical factor when choosing your home internet service because plans and prices are dependent on where you live. In our comparison chart, we ask you to enter your home address so we can show you the best prices in your area. Not all carriers and plans are available in every location so it's important to filter your address so you can see the best prices and plans that are available to you.

After you've factored in location you also have to keep in mind what's most important to you. If you're a heavy internet user with several people in your home, then broadband speed should be an important factor. If you care more about price, then you might have to compromise what speed you choose and look into what bundle packages are available.

What kind of broadband speed do I need?

Determining what internet speed you need is dependent on several factors - how you use the internet, the number of people in your home, the amount of devices being used.

If you have more than one person at home trying to stream movies or download videos, it might be wise to increase your bandwidth. For example, Netflix recommends 3Mb for one standard quality stream, 5Mb for a high-definition stream and 25Mb for an Ultra HD quality stream.

You need to keep in mind that this is the recommended speed for the service on its own, not for your total internet speed. If you have several people in your home that are using different devices and streaming, you might want to get 30Mb to 50Mb. If you only use your internet for browsing the web and social media than you shouldn't need more than around 1Mb.

Fiber internet vs cable internet

Just like television, cable internet uses a cable to transmit data and is used to supply both the internet connection and TV at the same time.

A fiber internet connection, on the other hand, is transmitted using fiber optic cable that's sent via small, flexible strands of glass that transmits light.

Because the fiber connection is delivered on a dedicated line, it provides more consistent speed than cable internet. Fiber is also more expensive than cable internet and isn't as widely available from providers. If you're getting internet for a business then you might want to consider Fiber, but if you're just getting internet for yourself at home then you'd probably be happy with traditional cable internet. The decision comes down to your requirements and budget.

TV and internet bundles

Most carriers offer packages that include internet and cable, internet and phone or all three. You can also usually save money by bundling your services together because most carriers will offer discounts if you want to add cable TV or a home line to your internet service. 

For phone bundles, you can choose if you want to include national calls, mobile calls, and international calls which will all be a factor in determining the cost. When selecting what TV package you want, you should think about what TV channels are essential to you so you can choose the best package that includes those specific channels.

Not interested in adding a phone line or cable? No worries! All carriers offer plans that include just the internet, so you don't have to pay for an additional service you don't want.

If you're interested in a new phone we have the best phones to help you out.

We also have the best laptop deals that are going on and the best cheap monitor deals that are available now. 

With the new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 now on sale, AT&T is offering a tempting trade-in deal to entice new buyers. If you trade in any Samsung Galaxy phone, AT&T will offer $1,000 in bill credits spread out over the term of your contract. Samsung loyalists will be able to join the folding class, and get their hands on Samsung's true flagship. 

What makes this offer particularly noteworthy is the tag line that follows: "Any year. Any condition." We have seen deals offered to trade in devices with cracked screens, but those deals stipulate that the phone must turn on and work properly aside from the screen damage. AT&T is going much further by allowing customers to trade in any phone in any condition. We checked the deal by offering AT&T an original Galaxy S device with absolutely no function whatsoever, and we've confirmed that the deal works as advertised.

How is this possible?

We need to read the fine print here. You don't actually get the phone for free – you have to pay for the phone, and then AT&T pays you back in bill credits over the course of your contract. Those payments start three months after you sign up, so $1,000 divided over the rest of the contract will be just under $50 back every month. So, if you were going to pay $75/month for an unlimited wireless plan, you'll pay just over $25 instead. 

Of course AT&T has a list of eligible devices, and it is quite extensive, stretching into the Galaxy A family. We we can't quite say it includes 'any' Galaxy device, if the list of eligible devices is final. If you're in the market for a new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4, you might just pick up the cheapest eligible used Samsung Galaxy you can find to take advantage of AT&T's largesse.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 launched today (August 10) at Samsung's Unpacked event, and the phone costs $1,000 directly from Samsung.  You can read our full hands-on impressions of the Galaxy Z Flip 4, and of Samsung's other new devices, including the Galaxy Z Fold 4, the Galaxy Watch 5, and the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro.

If this trade-in offer doesn't take your fancy, we've rounded up all the best Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 deals for you.

US broadband operator AT&T has become the first in the industry to achieve a 20Gbps symmetrical speed on a production fibre network, claiming the milestone could mean even faster speeds for consumers and businesses in the near future.

The company achieved the transmission rate on 25GS-PON in its broadband lab in Austin, Texas and says the technology can work with its existing fibre network. 

The company achieved 10Gbps in lab tests earlier this year and has a commercial 5Gbps ‘Hyper Gig’ broadband offering in the US.

Openreach fibre 

PON is used for the last mile of a broadband connection, linking businesses and households (along with mobile infrastructure) to the wider Internet. 

This essentially describes the fibre connection between a house, cabinet, and exchange.

The company says it will continue to work with other members of the 25GSPON MSA group, a collection of more than 50 operators and suppliers, to drive the standards and specifications of the technology, which it believes will mature within the next 6 to 12 months

Operators and telecoms equipment manufacturers around the world are testing future upgrades to the technology, including in the UK. Openreach and Nokia have already successfully tested 25G-PON in lab trials, while Vodafone and Nokia have started work using 100G-PON.

What separates AT&T’s achievement from other tests to date is the achievement of symmetrical 20Gbps download and upload speeds.

“Symmetrical 20 gig capability gives developers and engineers a huge runway to the future,” said Eddy Barker, AT&T’s AVP for Mobility & Access Architecture. “As concurrent and mass use of AR/VR, the metaverse, autonomous cars, telemedicine, robotic manufacturing, real-time video sharing and editing, and gaming continue to grow, our 20 Gbpss service will provide plenty of bandwidth – that includes helping make possible connected apps and services that haven’t even been imagined yet. “

Telecommunications giant AT&T has developed drones capable of beaming down 5G signal to an area with patchy connectivity.

In true dad joke style, the drone has been named the 5G Flying COW (an acronym for Cell on Wings). In testing, it was able to provide an area of some 10 square miles with strong 5G signal, AT&T says.

“We had intermittent, weak LTE signal at the flight location before we launched the 5G Flying COW,” said Ethan Hunt, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Principal Program Manager, AT&T. “We flew the drone up to about 300 feet, turned on the signal and it began transmitting strong 5G coverage to approximately 10 square miles.”

Flying for hours

While there may be many use cases for drone-based mobile hotspots, AT&T’s first idea is to have them help first responders, mountain rescue services and the like.

The benefits for teams works in rugged conditions are obvious, providing a reliable connection with which to communicate with one another and the people they are trying to help.

The usual problem with drones is their stamina. Today’s flying machines, even the most advanced ones, can only stay in the air for a couple of hours, while consumer-grade products rarely make it for longer than 40 minutes. Right now, AT&T’s devices are tethered, but that’s also being worked on for future iterations.

“We are currently working through many exciting technical challenges to expand the capabilities of our Flying COWs,” said Art Pregler, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Program Director, AT&T. 

“We’re working to autonomously fly without tethers for months without landing, using solar power to provide secure, reliable, and fast 5G connectivity to large numbers of users over wide geographic areas. This solution may one day help bring broadband connectivity to rural and other underserved communities across the US and elsewhere.”

Elon Musk’s Starlink is working on providing the entire world with satellite internet connectivity, but until that happens, flying drones beaming down super high-speed internet is a welcome next step.

• Give your fleet a connectivity boost with the best business mobile plans around

Reaching emergency services and getting help after an accident is now even easier with AT&T as it has launched location-based routing to automatically transmit wireless 911 calls to the appropriate call centers across the US. 

By using the new “Locate Before Route” feature from Intrado, the mobile carrier can now more quickly and accurately identify where a wireless 911 call originated from by using device GPS and hybrid information to route the call to the correct call center.

Location-based routing makes it possible for a device to be located within 50 meters of its location so that emergency services can more easily find those in need of help. 

Prior to this launch, wireless 911 calls were routed based on the location of cell towers which can cover up to a 10-mile radius. As a result, this often caused delays in emergency response especially when calls were made within a public safety answering point (PSAP) border where state, county or city boundaries overlap.

Calling emergency services from a mobile device

Over 50 years ago when AT&T worked with the FCC to establish the first 911 systems, landline phones dominated the market. Now though, 80 percent of all 911 calls come from a mobile device.

For this reason, AT&T is deploying location-based routing for mobile devices so that Americans can have the same fast, accurate and reliable connection to PSAPs regardless of how they’re calling emergency services.

EVP at AT&T Network, Chris Sambar provided further insight on the latest addition to the company’s mobile network in a press release, saying:

“Providing our customers with reliable connectivity and high-quality service on America’s largest wireless network is what we strive for everyday at AT&T. Launching this industry-leading public safety solution allows us to ultimately help improve the connections and efficiency for our wireless customers by offering more accurate service when making emergency calls.”

AT&T’s nationwide rollout of location-based routing has already started and is currently available in Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and Guam. However, the mobile carrier plans to roll out the new service to additional regions over the next several weeks with the rollout expected to be completed by the end of June.

• Need a more durable mobile device? Check out the best rugged smartphones

Despite all the time spent working from home during the pandemic, a new study from AT&T has revealed that the vast majority of businesses lack a detailed hybrid work strategy.

To compile their new Future of Work study, the US mobile carrier and Dubber Corporation Limited surveyed 303 US-based respondents between October and November of last year to discover that 72 percent of organizations don't currently have a hybrid work strategy while 76 percent lack the right key performance indicators (KPIs) to support hybrid working models.

Still though, the research shows that hybrid work will be the standard operating model across industries by 2024 according to 81 percent of respondents with slightly more than half (56%) of work done offsite. There also still exists tension between what employees and organizations want as 86 percent of employees prefer a hybrid work model but 64 percent believe their organization would rather use a on-premise work model.

SVP of marketing at AT&T Business, Alicia Dietsch provided further insights on the results of its Future of Work study in a press release, saying:

“There’s been a non-reversible shift in the way business is done thanks to the constraints of COVID-19. It’s clear that a successful talent program now requires a hybrid work policy, but that policy needs to be supported by a strategic tech-first cultural reset, to ensure business growth and competition. Firms need to ask themselves if they have the in-house expertise to achieve this, or whether it’s now time to go beyond a partner in remote infrastructure rollout to a partner in tech-first remote business strategy.”

Challenges to effective hybrid work 

Last year represented a major shift in how companies conducted business with just under a quarter (24%) of those surveyed saying that their employees worked onsite. Before the pandemic, these non-traditional work models were often viewed as employee perks but they are quickly becoming the norm.

When it came to the barriers to successful hybrid work, respondents said that lack of workplace innovation, insufficient oversight and cultural shifts presented the biggest challenges. However, participants believe that investments in strategy, building culture remotely and the application of AI in critical business use-cases can help firms successfully transition to a hybrid-first work environment.

Chief experience officers also identified maintaining employee oversight, losing institutional/tribal knowledge and sustaining company culture as other challenges to effective hybrid work. Despite these challenges, mass adoption of new work models has show to be effective with 79 percent of firms believing their employees have been productive though only 45 percent were confident that in employee innovation during the period of the study.

Although hybrid work certainly has its ups and downs, one benefit that can't be overlooked is how adopting a hybrid work model can help attract young talent with 100 percent of those surveyed in agreement on this point.

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