Key Takeaways
- AT&T shares were moving lower in premarket trading Monday after the telecommunications bellwether said over the weekend that a data breach had leaked millions of customers’ details onto the dark web.
- The data contained information from 7.6 million current accounts and 65.4 million former accounts , including names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and Social Security numbers.
- The AT&T share price may find support from an eight-month uptrend line around $17 and resistance from a horizontal line near $18.10.
Shares in telecommunications bellwether AT&T Inc. (T) were moving lower in premarket trading Monday after the company said on Saturday that it’s investigating a data breach two weeks ago that leaked millions of customers’ personal details onto the dark web.
The telecommunication giant’s preliminary analysis of the incident identified that the data contained information from 7.6 million current accounts and 65.4 million former accounts , including names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and Social Security numbers. AT&T said the compromised data set appears to be from 2019 or earlier and does not contain personal financial information or customers’ call history.
The company has reset the passcodes of affected account holders and urged those customers to set up fraud alerts from nationwide credit bureaus as well as monitor their account activity and credit reports.
While the Dallas, Texas-based telecommunications provider has not identified the source of the data breach, it said the incident had not had a significant impact on its operations. “As of today, this incident has not had a material impact on AT&T’s operations,” the company said in a statement released on Saturday.
The data breach comes about a month after the company said a system issue caused an hours-long outage, for which it later clarified was not related to a cyberattack.
Since bottoming out in July last year, AT&T shares have continued to grind higher, though the price has traded mostly sideways following a bullish golden cross pattern forming on the chart in late December.
During retracements, the stock may encounter support around $17 from an eight-month uptrend line stretching back to the July 2023 low. On the upside, the price could run into overhead resistance near a key horizontal line near $18.10. A breakout through these key technical levels could mark the beginning of a trending move in the stock.
AT&T shares were down 2.0% at $17.25 about three hours before Monday’s opening bell. The stock gained 6.6% in the first quarter.
UPDATE—April 1, 2024: This article was updated after publication to include Monday’s pre-market share-price move.
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