Current and former AT&T customers may be eligible for a payout from a $177 million settlement connected to two data breaches.
A U.S. judge granted preliminary approval on June 20 to the settlement that resolves lawsuits against AT&T over the 2019 and 2024 incidents.
The company announced in July 2024 that call and text message records of nearly all of its cellular customers were exposed. In March of the same year, AT&T said it was investigating a data set released on the “dark web.”
AT&T said in a statement to Reuters that it denied allegations it was “responsible for these criminal acts.”
“We have agreed to this settlement to avoid the expense and uncertainty of protracted litigation,” the company added.
Here’s what to know about the AT&T data breach settlement.
How much can I claim from the AT&T settlement?
AT&T has agreed to pay up to $2,500 or $5,000 to customers who suffered losses that are “fairly traceable” to the incidents, depending on which one affected the customer.
The company is to create two funds for payouts: allocating $149 million for those affected by the 2024 breach and $28 million for those affected by the 2019 breach, according to court documents.
After payments are made for direct losses, the remaining funds will be distributed to customers whose personal information was accessed.
The company told Reuters that it expects payments to be issued early next year.
When will I be paid from the AT&T settlement?
Court documents indicate that a notification program for the settlement will begin Aug. 4 and will be completed Oct. 17.
The deadline to submit claim forms is listed as Nov. 18 and a final approval hearing will be held on Dec. 3.
What happened in the AT&T breaches?
The company said in a 2024 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission it learned in April that customer data was illegally downloaded from an AT&T workspace on a third-party cloud platform.
AT&T disclosed that its call logs were copied from its workspace on a Snowflake cloud platform covering about six months of customer call and text data from 2022 from nearly all its customers.
Analysis of the incident announced in March done by the company suggested that approximately 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders had information appear on the “dark web.”
The information, including addresses, Social Security numbers and passcodes, appeared to be from 2019 and earlier, the BBC reported at the time of the announcement.
Contributing: Gabe Hauari, USA TODAY; Reuters
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: AT&T $177 million settlement: When could customers get paid?
