“AT&T security breach exposes call, text data from almost all customers” (The Hill):
A security breach at AT&T exposed call and text data from nearly all of its customers, the company revealed Friday.
The records of most of AT&T’s cellular customers between May and October 2022, as well as a single day in January 2023, were illegally downloaded from its workspace on a third-party cloud platform, AT&T said.
The question for today is… why bother? I assume that a mostly peaceful download of this nature was done in order to make money, but how does money get made?
Here’s one theory: the information gets sold to our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in India who call us multiple times per day with concerns about our rooftop solar, Medicare, and final expense insurance coverage. With the purloined data, these folks can call us with caller IDs that make it seem as though a friend is calling and, therefore, the spam call is more likely to be answered.
A second theory is that the mostly peaceful Internet users who performed the download can determine which financial institutions an AT&T customer relies on. That will make it easier to call the customer and say “I’m calling from Citibank about your account. Can you please verify your account number…”.
How else can these call/text records be turned into cash?
If not on data security, what’s been the corporate focus for AT&T?
The Pride shirts might be working. AT&T says that it doubled “Percent LGBTQ+ representation in U.S. workforce” between 2018 and 2022 (from 1 percent to 2 percent, so still quite a ways to go considering that 21 percent of American Gen-Z adults identify as LGBT and 7.1 percent of Americans of all ages).
What a crappy, brain-rotted thing to say. Don’t you think it’d be more intelligent to point out the money they’re spending on buybacks, dividends or exec comp?
DD: Everyone is more intelligent than I am, so the answer is likely “yes”. On the other hand, what’s more important than highlighting AT&T’s discrimination against members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community? According the company’s web site, their workforce is only 2 percent LGBTQ+ in a nation whose working-age population is at least 10 percent LGBTQ+ (the above-cited Gallup poll).
Ding dong, you’re on target here. The items you highlight clearly demonstrate the corporate greed culture evident in most U.S. and global companies. It’s beyond time for society to take away the keys from these destructive parasites and repossess their assets for the common man.
Dear dd, what is wrong with stock buybacks? When not made with taxpayer funds of course. Or paying dividends to the shareholders? Exec compensation at large public companies is mostly stealing, bribery and control, have to agree with you on it.
I imagine there will be at least a little Ashley-Madison-esque threatened affair revelations. Also, the tabloid and other journalists might be able to do some data mining.
(Who have Epstein associates been texting a lot, what about Hunter Biden?)
Mike, I don’t think it’s any secret who the Epstein associates have been texting a lot: Bill and Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman come to mind.
OT: My FL city just agreed to a 25% pay increase over three years to police officers and firefighters. Along w/ a 3% annual COLA to pension benefits. Now they’re deciding on what services to cut and how much to increase property taxes to pay for this,
DP: I’ve noticed some mission creep in FL state and country governments even in just the three years that we’ve been here. Awash in cash from increased tax revenues they are adding all kinds of new initiatives for affordable housing, first responder subsidized housing, hurricane defense upgrades for private houses (only if certain income requirements are met, I think), paying for overpriced US-made steel (https://thecapitolist.com/new-legislation-mandates-u-s-produced-iron-and-steel-for-florida-public-works-projects/ ), etc. Here’s one from Palm Beach County that is maybe state wide. Since mortgage rates are higher than people want, let’s give 4% mortgages to selected individuals who jump through various hurdles (including making a 3.5% down payment; party like it’s 2005?).
https://discover.pbcgov.org/Lists/Newsroom/NewsDispForm.aspx?ID=5347&ContentTypeId=0x010400B394EB4EDAFC8D49A6998AD1EB535F61
(This must have dramatically increased inequality because it was limited to 50 lucky people in a county of 1.5 million humans, quite a few of whom likely met the income requirements.)
It seems that it is almost impossible for a government to say “We have more than enough money so we’re cutting tax rates.”
Not exactly mission creep, since the library system is quite old, but “In the past six years, the county library budget has increased to $84 million from $53 million, an increase of 58%, and another $10 million hike has been requested for fiscal year 2025. … Its millage rate of 0.5491 has not been raised since 2011, but with the rise in property values, the millage rate has generated enough to pay for its operating costs as well as its capital costs.” They’ll have a new main library opening in 2030 that will be 3X the size of the current one (I’ve never heard of a crowding problem at a Palm Beach County public library). https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2024/05/14/palm-beach-county-will-build-new-main-library-triple-the-current-size/73616931007/
The library’s mission has expanded somewhat, I guess. Perhaps since 2020 they’ve also turned into food distribution centers. They provide taxpayer-funded weekend meals for children during the school year and taxpayer-funded meals every day for children during the summer. See https://pbclibrary.bibliocommons.com/events/65d4bb9cb7ed963d008b5b45 for example, and https://www.pbclibrary.org/news/palm-beach-county-library-system-is-serving-free-summer-lunches-weekend-meal-kits-for-kids/
Sounds like Florida is headed the way of New York and California (tax the rich and spread the ill-gotten wealth), which must come as a pleasant irony for the idle rich who have moved there in droves in recent years thinking they were moving to a tax haven.