If you think back to the invention of the telephone, the Bell system evolved, and AT&T became the monopoly for Americans using the phone. That system was changed in 1984 when the government of the day broke up the company to what was known as baby bells and over the past number of years the phone giants which we have today exist. As technology evolved many people moved from landlines to cell phones and today that is the dominate way of using the phone. All companies compete for business, but sometimes have a long record of being in business counts for customers.

In an article by Michelle Chapman of the Associated Press, AT&T reported that in April data of nearly all the customers of AT&T cellphone service was downloaded from a 3rd party platform in a security breach. The data mostly involved data from 2022. AT&T is a large company which means more than 109 million customers were affected. The timeframe affected is May 1, 2022 and October 31, 2022 of more calls and texts. The data was held in the cloud by Snowflake Inc.

Snowflake and AT&T have been working with the FBI and Department of Justice. The DOJ noted the breach met the security standard for a delayed filing aby AT&T with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing made the report public. The US Federal Communications Commission which regulates the phone industry has an ongoing investigation.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, while it is important in this case AT&T is working with all the agencies and boards of the government, the question for all the customers is what is AT&T doing for them? In the past we have seen companies offer free monitoring of your credit report because generally people that steal what money from the individual or company. We will see what happens, but what would your company do if there was a breach in security?

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.