AT&T Security Problem Exposes 114,000 iPad Email Addresses

Gawker reported that a security breach of data from Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPad users whose wireless service with AT&T (NYSE: T) exposed 114,000 email addresses.

AT&T’s bumbling about the matter brought the following response:

“AT&T was informed by a business customer on Monday of the potential exposure of their iPad ICC IDS. The only information that can be derived from the ICC IDS is the e-mail address attached to that device.

This issue was escalated to the highest levels of the company and was corrected by Tuesday; and we have essentially turned off the feature that provided the e-mail addresses.

The person or group who discovered this gap did not contact AT&T.

We are continuing to investigate and will inform all customers whose e-mail addresses and ICC IDS may have been obtained. At this point, there is no evidence that any other customer information was shared.

We take customer privacy very seriously and while we have fixed this problem, we apologize to our customers who were impacted.

The news is an example of why many Americans are still unwilling to share details about themselves online and why e-commerce is still resisted by many people. Data is never really private.

Douglas A. McIntyre