Two sizable data breaches in 2019 and 2024 exposed the personal information of AT&T customers, but now the company is set to resolve the matter with a gigantic settlement pay out – and you don’t even have to still be a customer to get in on it:
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/at-t-data-breach-what-is-at-t-doing-for-the-73-million-accounts-breached/
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/latest-at-t-data-breach-hits-nearly-all-cellular-customers-what-to-know/
On Friday, June 20, US District Judge Ada Brown granted preliminary approval to the terms of a proposed settlement from AT&T that would resolve two lawsuits related to the data breaches. The current settlement would see AT&T pay $177 million to customers adversely affected by at least one of the two data breaches.
The settlement will prioritize larger payments to customers who suffered damages that are “fairly traceable” to the data leaks. It will also provide bigger payments to those affected by the larger of the two leaks, which began in 2019. While the company is working toward a settlement, it has continued to deny that it was “responsible for these criminal acts.”
For all the details we have about the settlement right now, keep reading, ….
Who is eligible to file a claim for the AT&T data breach settlement?
As of now, we know that the settlement will pay out to any current or former AT&T customer whose data was accessed in one of these data breaches, with higher payments reserved for those who can provide documented proof that they suffered damages directly resulting from their data being stolen.
If you’re eligible, you should receive a notice about it, either by email or a physical letter in the mail, sometime in the coming months. The company expects that the claims process will begin on Aug. 4, 2025.
How much will the AT&T data breach payments be?
You’ll have to “reasonably” prove damages caused by these data breaches to be eligible for the highest and most prioritized payouts. For the 2019 breach, those claimants can receive up to $5,000. For the Snowflake breach in 2024, the max payout will be $2,500. It’s not clear at this time how the company might be handling customers who’ve been affected by both breaches.
AT&T will focus on making those payments first, and whatever’s left of the $177 million settlement total will be disbursed to anyone whose data was accessed, even without proof of damages. Because these payouts depend on how many people get the higher amounts first, we can’t say definitively how much they will be. ….