AT&T customers may be eligible for compensation following a major $177 million settlement the company has agreed to, resolving lawsuits tied to two significant data breaches.
The settlement received preliminary approval from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas late last week.
According to the court’s preliminary approval order, AT&T will establish two separate funds: a $149 million pool for one class of claimants, and a $28 million pool for the other.
Those funds will be “used to pay for each class’ respective Settlement Class Member Benefits; Settlement Administration Costs; any Court-approved attorneys’ fees and costs to Class Counsel; and any Court-approved Service Awards to Plaintiffs for serving as Class Representatives,” the filing stated.
The settlement brings to a close legal claims surrounding two breaches AT&T disclosed last year.
One of those incidents involved the unauthorized downloading of data from roughly 109 million customer accounts. AT&T revealed that call logs had been accessed from its Snowflake cloud storage, covering a six-month period in 2022 and involving nearly its entire customer base.
In March 2024, the company announced it was investigating a separate data set that had been posted on the “dark web.” AT&T’s preliminary analysis found that the breach affected approximately 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders, and the data in question appeared to be from 2019 or earlier.
Both breaches led to class action lawsuits against AT&T, which are now addressed through this multi-million-dollar agreement.
AT&T addressed the data breach in a statement at the time, saying, “In April, AT&T learned that customer data was illegally downloaded from our workspace on a third-party cloud platform. We launched an investigation and engaged leading cybersecurity experts to understand the nature and scope of the criminal activity.”
In response to the legal action that followed, the company told Reuters that it “denies the allegations that it was ‘responsible for these criminal acts,'” but decided to settle “to avoid the expense and uncertainty of protracted litigation.”
Customers impacted by the breaches can expect payments to begin early next year.
According to court documents, two separate funds have been created for claim distribution: $149 million allocated for the 2024 breach and $28 million for the 2019 breach. Depending on which breach affected them, customers may be eligible to receive up to $2,500 or $5,000.
USA TODAY reported that notification letters will start going out on August 4 and will be completed by October 17. The deadline to submit claims is November 18, ahead of a final approval hearing scheduled for December 3.
More details on how customers can claim their share of the settlement funds are expected as the process moves forward.
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