In a filing made earlier this week with regulators in California, AT&T revealed that between April 9 and April 21, some of it's wireless customers had their personal account information breached by employees of AT&T vendors. Apparently, the outside employees violated AT&T's privacy guidelines by using customers' personal information, to include Social Security numbers, in order to obtain carrier unlock codes for the customers' devices. AT&T declined to give many specifics, to include exactly how many customers were affected or if customers outside of California had their data breached. However it is a safe bet to assume that the unlock codes were requested in order to increase the value of the phones on the secondary market, where carrier unlocked phones typically cost more than identical carrier specific models. It is also not known if the phones for which the unlock codes were obtained were previously stolen or if they found their way onto the secondary market legitimately. Customers who had their accounts breached should have been notified by AT&T by now. More info is
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Source: Computerworld.com, thanks to cmh714 for the tip!