AT&T’s data breach in 2024 was one of the year’s five biggest.
If you were one of the hundreds of millions of people whose personal data was exposed in either or both of AT&T recent privacy breaches, it’s almost finally time to receive compensation.
On Monday, Aug. 4, Kroll Settlement Administration, the firm managing the company’s massive $177 million settlement, announced that the claim process has begun and that eligible customers will need to file claims by Nov. 18, 2025 in order to receive a payout.
The settlement, which received preliminary approval from a federal judge in June, is meant to resolve two class-action lawsuits tied to the breaches. If your personal data was compromised in either incident, it’s worth checking your eligibility. Submitting a claim could put real money back in your pocket, even if your time with AT&T is long behind you.
The settlement prioritizes 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.”
What happened with these AT&T data breaches?
AT&T confirmed the two data breaches last year, announcing an investigation into the first in March before confirming it in May and confirming the second in July.
The first of the confirmed breaches began in 2019. The company revealed that about 7.6 million current and 65.4 million former account holders had their data exposed to hackers, including names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth. The company began investigating the situation last year after it reported that customer data had appeared on the dark web.
The second breach began in April 2024, when a hacker broke into AT&T cloud storage provider Snowflake and accessed 2022 call and text records for almost all of the company’s US customers, about 109 million in all. The company stressed that no names were attached to the stolen data. Two people were arrested in connection with the breach.
Both of these incidents sparked a wave of class-action lawsuits alleging corporate neglect on the part of AT&T in failing to sufficiently protect its customers.
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.
How can I file a claim for my share of the AT&T data breach settlement?
On Aug. 4, the Kroll Settlement Administration announced that affected AT&T customers can now file claims against the proposed $177 million settlement. Claims can be filed online at telecomdatasettlement.com.
After clicking on Submit Claim on the settlement website, you’ll be asked for a Class Member ID. That number should be in the email or mailed notice you received about the settlement. You’ll also be asked to provide an email address, your AT&T account number or your full name.
If you don’t want to file the claim online, you can download and print the PDF forms for either the first data breach announced on March 30, 2024, the second breach announced on July 12, 2024, or the overlap form if you were part of both breaches. Printed and signed forms should be mailed to: AT&T Data Incident Settlement c/o Kroll Settlement Administration LLC, P.O. Box 5324 New York, NY 10150-5324.
Settlement claims need to be filed by Nov. 18, 2025, or else you’ll be left out of the class-action settlement. If you disagree with the settlement and want to opt out so you can sue AT&T yourself, you’ll need to do that by Oct. 17, 2025. The final approval process for the proposed settlement will be Dec. 3, 2025.
If the settlement is approved in December, payouts to customers are likely to begin in early 2026.
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. Customers impacted by both breaches will be able to apply for both classes of the settlement, and it’s possible that they could receive the maximum amount for both, making the maximum payout $7,500.
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.
