AT&T customers are getting surprise password change alerts, but don't panic yet

Some emails just ruin your day in a heartbeat: boss requesting a meeting to discuss “restructuring,” landlord notifying you of a rent increase, or just getting some bad news from a family member. High on that list has got to be the surprise “your password has been updated” notification when you never changed anything yourself. Today a whole bunch of AT&T users have been waking up to emails just like that — but it might not be cause for alarm, after all.

Over on Reddit’s AT&T sub, we’ve spotted a spate of reports coming in this morning that all describe the same thing: Users getting a message from the carrier in the wee hours of the morning, arriving over both text and email, telling them their password was just changed.

Quite a few subscribers share that they initially suspected a phishing attempt, or some kind of other fraud, but the emails appear official even under scrutiny. A few users mention receiving them at the same time, which might suggest that the carrier sent them out en masse — and, perhaps, unintentionally.

If you also got one of these emails or texts, first things first: Don’t panic. At this point, it looks reasonably unlikely that you’ve actually been the victim of a hack. That said, if you just don’t want to take any chances, feel free to contact AT&T’s fraud department out of an abundance of caution.

We’ve already reached out to AT&T in the hopes of getting some sort of official confirmation as to what might be going on here. It would be good to know, either way — but we’re obviously hoping that this indeed turns out to be just one unfortunate glitch. We’ll update this post with anything new we manage to learn, so check back soon.