Money could be coming the way of some AT&T users through a significant settlement that stemmed from lawsuits about a pair of data breaches the company experienced.
The settlement that AT&T reached, worth $177 million, received preliminary approval from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas late last week.
The preliminary approval order from the court said the company is setting up a $149 million pool of money for one of the settlement classes, and another totaling $28 million 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 said.
The deal closes out claims over a pair of data breaches disclosed by the company last year.
One of the incidents resulted in the illegal downloading of about 109 million customer accounts at the U.S. wireless company. AT&T disclosed 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 of its customers.
In March 2024, AT&T said it was investigating a data set released on the “dark web” and said its preliminary analysis showed it affected approximately 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders. The company said the data set appeared to be from 2019 or earlier.
The breaches have prompted class action lawsuits against AT&T.
Now, with preliminary approval from the court, certain current and former users are poised to receive settlement payments in the future.
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Those who can provide “documented losses fairly traceable” to breaches that affected 2019 and earlier data can seek a maximum payment of $5,000 by filing a claim, according to the settlement agreement. Meanwhile, the maximum amount that members of the class action with such losses for the other breach could potentially get will be $2,500.
Other eligible impacted AT&T customers are also poised to receive money following disbursements for direct losses.
Those who could qualify for settlement payments will have until Nov. 18 to file claims, according to the preliminary approval order.
Notification of the settlement will take place before that, with that slated to occur between Aug. 4 to Oct. 17.
For those that want to opt out of the settlement, they will need to do so by the same date that notification is expected to be finished.
“While we deny the allegations in these lawsuits that we were responsible for these criminal acts, we have agreed to this settlement to avoid the expense and uncertainty of protracted litigation,” the company told FOX Business in a statement. “We remain committed to protecting our customers’ data and ensuring their continued trust in us.”
AT&T said it anticipates final approval of the settlement later this year. The preliminary approval order planned a hearing for that on Dec. 3.
Payments will go out in the beginning of next year after the final approval, according to the company.
AT&T generated $30.6 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2025. Its net income, meanwhile, came in at $4.7 billion.
The company is slated to release its second-quarter earnings results next month.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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