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AT&T

U.S. telecom company that agreed to a $177 million class settlement over two 2024 customer data breaches

Entries
41
On the record
16
Stories
1
Latest entry
Oct 30, 2026

The record

Compiled by the MrScandal desk from the documents below ยท Desk editor Laima ฤ’rkลกฤทe-Kreicberga ยท Nov 12, 2026

The AT&T data breach settlement is a $177 million class action deal over two breaches AT&T announced in 2024. It holds $149 million for people whose information was in a data set released on the dark web, which AT&T said in March 2024 covered about 7.6 million current and 65.4 million former account holders, and $28 million for customers whose call and text records were copied in April 2024 from AT&T's workspace on the Snowflake cloud platform, disclosed that July. Senior U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater granted final approval in Dallas on October 2, 2026. Claims closed on December 18, 2025. On October 30, 2026 the administrator, Kroll, said no payments had been issued and none were expected in 2026, because the deal takes effect only after the time to appeal runs out and any appeals end. AT&T settled without admitting liability or wrongdoing.

Claimants with documented losses could ask for up to $5,000 under the first breach and up to $2,500 under the second. Everyone else gets a pro rata share of what is left after fees and costs. Kroll estimated $39 to $40 for Tier 1 claimants, whose Social Security numbers were exposed, $7.50 to $8.10 for Tier 2 and $6.50 to $7.10 for Tier 3, the Snowflake account owners. Of 4,918,073 claims received, 804,381 were declined as fraudulent after a review by the firm Covalynt; flagged claimants can ask for another review with a signed paper form mailed within 21 days of Kroll's email. The court awarded class counsel one third of each fund, $59 million in all, and approved $18.9 million of Kroll's costs, noting that the estimate had grown from $5.5 million to $22.2 million.

Regulators have acted against AT&T over privacy, billing and outages for more than a decade. It paid $105 million in a 2014 mobile cramming settlement and $60 million in 2019 to end the Federal Trade Commission's unlimited-data throttling case. The FCC fined it about $57 million in 2024 for sharing customers' location data; the Fifth Circuit threw the fine out in 2025, the Supreme Court reversed that ruling 8-1 on June 4, 2026, and AT&T has since asked the Fifth Circuit for a refund. In 2024 the FCC also collected $13 million over a vendor's breach, $950,000 over a 2023 911 outage and $2.3 million over broadband subsidy claims. In 2022 AT&T Illinois paid $23 million and admitted arranging payments to an ally of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. The Justice Department lost its suit to block AT&T's purchase of Time Warner.

Questions people ask

When will the AT&T settlement pay out?

Not in 2026. The administrator said on October 30, 2026 that payments had not been issued, cannot be made until the settlement becomes effective after the time to appeal ends and any post-judgment motions or appeals are resolved, and are not expected to be issued in 2026. Claimants with a valid claim do not need to do anything else. source

How much will I get from the AT&T data breach settlement?

It depends on your tier and on the number of valid claims. Kroll estimated $39 to $40 for Tier 1 (Social Security number in the first breach), $7.50 to $8.10 for Tier 2 (other data in the first breach) and $6.50 to $7.10 for Tier 3 (Snowflake account owners). Documented losses are paid up to $5,000 for the first breach and $2,500 for the second. source

Who is included in the AT&T settlement?

Living people in the U.S. whose data was in the incident announced March 30, 2024, and AT&T account owners or line users whose phone numbers were in the records taken in the incident announced July 12, 2024. Some people belong to both classes. source

What were the two AT&T data breaches?

The first, announced March 30, 2024, was a data set that appeared on the dark web by August 20, 2021 and is alleged to include Social Security numbers, dates of birth, account numbers and passcodes. The second, announced July 12, 2024, was call log data downloaded from AT&T's Snowflake workspace: phone numbers, interaction counts and call durations, without call or text content, names or Social Security numbers. source

Can I still file an AT&T settlement claim?

No. The deadline to submit a claim was December 18, 2025, and replies to claim deficiency notices were due by September 8, 2026. source

Why was my AT&T settlement claim rejected as fraud?

At the parties' request, Kroll retained a fraud-analysis firm, Covalynt, and 804,381 of the 4.9 million claims were declined for fraud. Kroll emails each flagged claimant a Validation Form, which must be printed, signed in ink and mailed in its own envelope, postmarked within 21 days of the email, for the claim to be reviewed again. source

What happens if someone appeals the AT&T settlement?

Payment waits. The settlement becomes effective 10 days after the time to appeal the final approval order runs out; if an appeal is filed, 30 days after the last appellate ruling affirming the order or after a dismissal with no further right to appeal. Kroll must pay no later than 60 days after that date. source

Did AT&T have to pay the FCC's $57 million location data fine?

AT&T paid it and then challenged it. On June 4, 2026 the Supreme Court held that FCC forfeiture orders do not violate the right to a jury trial because they create no obligation to pay until the Justice Department wins a collection suit tried anew, and it sent AT&T's case back to the Fifth Circuit. source

Did AT&T go to trial over the Time Warner merger?

Yes. The Justice Department sued to block the deal, a federal judge in Washington ruled for AT&T after a trial in 2018, and the D.C. Circuit affirmed on February 26, 2019. source

Roles and honours on the record

  • 2016-2019 Buyer of Time Warner Inc., under a merger announced October 22, 2016 that the government sued to block source
  • 2022-2024 AT&T Illinois (Illinois Bell Telephone Company), party to a two-year deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney in Chicago source
  • as of 2024 One of the largest U.S. wireless carriers, with 241.5 million wireless subscribers and $122.4 billion in 2023 operating revenue, per the FCC source
  • 2024-2026 Defendant, In re: AT&T Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, N.D. Tex. No. 3:24-cv-00757, MDL No. 3:24-md-03114 source
  • 2023-2025 Defendant, with executives including CEO John Stankey, in a securities suit by New York City pension funds over lead-clad cables, N.D. Tex. source
  • 2025-2026 Respondent, FCC v. AT&T, Inc., U.S. Supreme Court No. 25-406 source
  • 2026 Plaintiff in a federal suit against the California Public Utilities Commission and Attorney General Rob Bonta over copper landline rules source

Settlements: who qualifies and the payout

Stories in this file

AT&T: UNCONFIRMEDBusiness ยท 4d ago

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The record of lost DOJ merger fights, AT&T-Time Warner included, is not in the documents read. Deal values and outcomes stay unconfirmed. โณ

The record, entry by entry

2024 data breaches and the $177 million settlement

  1. 2024-03-30 Official AT&T said AT&T data fields were in a data set released on the dark web about two weeks earlier, apparently from 2019 or earlier, affecting about 7.6 million current and 65.4 million former account holders. AT&T, company statement
  2. 2024-06-05 Ruled The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation centralized the class actions over the first breach in the Northern District of Texas as MDL No. 3114. Suits over the Snowflake incident were later sent to a separate Snowflake MDL before Judge Brian M. Morris in Montana. U.S. District Court, N.D. Tex., memorandum opinion and order (Dkt. 534), background
  3. 2024-07-12 Official AT&T disclosed that between April 14 and 25, 2024, hackers copied records of calls and texts of nearly all its wireless customers from May 1 to October 31, 2022 and January 2, 2023, without call content; the Justice Department had twice allowed it to delay disclosure. AT&T Inc., Form 8-K, Item 1.05
  4. 2024-07-15 Reported WIRED and Bloomberg reported, citing the hacker and an intermediary, that AT&T paid about $370,000 in bitcoin in May 2024 to have the stolen call records deleted. AT&T declined to comment on the payment; a spokesperson put the number of affected people at about 109 million. The Record (Recorded Future News) report
  5. 2025-05-30 Official After mediation in Los Angeles on March 17 to 19, 2025, AT&T and the plaintiffs signed one settlement for both breaches, with a $149 million and a $28 million non-reversionary cash fund. AT&T settled without admitting liability or wrongdoing and denied the allegations. Class action settlement agreement and release (ECF No. 283-1)
  6. 2025-05-30 Filed Class counsel filed the master class action complaint, alleging violations of the Communications Act, the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act and the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act, breach of implied contract and negligence. U.S. District Court, N.D. Tex., memorandum opinion and order (Dkt. 534), background
  7. 2025-06-20 Ruled Judge Ada Brown granted preliminary approval of the $177 million settlement, set an October 17, 2025 opt-out and objection deadline, a November 18, 2025 claim deadline and a December 3, 2025 hearing, and barred class members from pursuing other suits or arbitrations against AT&T in the meantime. U.S. District Court, N.D. Tex., preliminary approval order (Dkt. 298)
  8. 2025-07-22 Reported Thousands of AT&T customers pursuing individual arbitration asked a federal appeals court to lift the injunction that barred them from arbitrating their breach claims, arguing the settlement would wipe out their arbitration rights, Bloomberg Law reported. Bloomberg Law report
  9. 2025-10-03 Ruled On a joint motion, Judge Brown moved the opt-out and objection deadlines to November 17, 2025 and the claim deadline to December 18, 2025. U.S. District Court, N.D. Tex., order extending deadlines (MDL Dkt. 56)
  10. 2025-11-03 Filed Plaintiffs filed the motion for final approval, which AT&T did not oppose, with applications for attorney's fees of one third of each fund, costs and service awards for the class representatives. U.S. District Court, N.D. Tex., memorandum opinion and order (Dkt. 534)
  11. 2025-11-17 Official The opt-out and objection deadline passed. Kroll later reported 10,741 opt-out requests, most of them late or non-compliant, and about 45 objectors filed objections; notice was directed to 99,763,302 class member records. U.S. District Court, N.D. Tex., memorandum opinion and order (Dkt. 534)
  12. 2025-12-18 Official The claim deadline for the breach settlement passed. AT&T Data Incident Settlement, court-authorized settlement website
  13. 2026-01-15 Official Judge Brown held the fairness hearing on final approval and took the motion under advisement. U.S. District Court, N.D. Tex., memorandum opinion and order (Dkt. 534)
  14. 2026-08-05 Admitted Canadian Connor Moucka pleaded guilty to computer fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy over the Snowflake extortions, admitting he stole call and text records of more than 100 million AT&T customers, KrebsOnSecurity reported; sentencing was set for October 27. KrebsOnSecurity report
  15. 2026-08-14 Official Judge Brown recused herself while the final approval motion was under advisement, and on August 17 the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation reassigned the MDL to Senior Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater. U.S. District Court, N.D. Tex., memorandum opinion and order (Dkt. 534)
  16. 2026-08-24 Official Kroll counted 4,918,073 claims: 1,654,046 allowed as Tier 1, 687,859 as Tier 2 and 1,582,248 as Tier 3, with 1,099,732 rejected as late, duplicate, fraudulent or ineligible, including 804,381 declined for fraud. U.S. District Court, N.D. Tex., memorandum opinion and order (Dkt. 534), citing the Kroll omnibus declaration
  17. 2026-10-02 Ruled Judge Fitzwater approved the settlement over the objections, sustaining the objection to the Texas Bar Foundation as cy pres recipient and ordering other candidates to be proposed, and awarded fees of $49,666,666.66 and $9,333,333.33, one third of each fund, plus $54,000 in service awards. U.S. District Court, N.D. Tex., memorandum opinion and order (Dkt. 534)
  18. 2026-10-02 Ruled In the same order the court approved the fraud review and the notice-and-cure process for flagged claims, approved $18,856,175.48 of Kroll's fees against a cost estimate that had risen from $5,453,185 to $22,161,587.09, and reserved judgment on the rest. U.S. District Court, N.D. Tex., memorandum opinion and order (Dkt. 534)
  19. 2026-10-30 Official The settlement administrator said payments had not been issued, could not be made until the settlement becomes effective after any appeals, and were not expected in 2026. AT&T Data Incident Settlement, court-authorized settlement website

FCC location data fine and the Supreme Court

  1. 2024-04-29 Ruled The FCC fined AT&T more than $57 million for selling access to customers' location data to third parties without consent and without reasonable safeguards, finalizing a proposed fine from February 2020. Federal Communications Commission, news release
  2. 2025-04-17 Reported A Fifth Circuit panel, in an opinion by Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, vacated the FCC's $57 million location data fine, holding under the Supreme Court's 2024 Jarkesy decision that the agency's in-house process denied AT&T a jury trial. Broadband Breakfast report
  3. 2025-08-22 Ruled The Fifth Circuit denied rehearing en banc, withdrew its April opinion and issued a substitute that again granted AT&T's petition and vacated the FCC forfeiture order, citing the right to an Article III decisionmaker and a jury trial. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, revised opinion, AT&T v. FCC, No. 24-60223
  4. 2025-10-02 Filed The federal government petitioned the Supreme Court to review the Fifth Circuit's ruling, opening FCC v. AT&T, Inc., No. 25-406. U.S. Supreme Court, docket No. 25-406
  5. 2026-06-04 Ruled The Supreme Court ruled 8-1, in an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts with Justice Thomas dissenting, that the FCC may issue forfeiture orders without a jury because they do not settle a duty to pay; it reversed the Fifth Circuit in AT&T's case and affirmed the Second Circuit's ruling against Verizon. U.S. Supreme Court, opinion, FCC v. AT&T, Inc., No. 25-406
  6. 2026-08 Reported On remand, AT&T asked the Fifth Circuit to order the FCC to refund the $57 million it had paid and to decide whether the privacy rules covered the data and whether the fine was capped at $2 million, Broadband Breakfast reported. Broadband Breakfast report

Other FCC, FTC and state actions

  1. 2014-10-08 Official AT&T Mobility agreed to a $105 million settlement over unauthorized third-party charges on customers' phone bills, typically $9.99 a month: $80 million to the FTC for refunds, $20 million to the states and the District of Columbia, and $5 million to the FCC. Federal Trade Commission, press release
  2. 2015-04-08 Official AT&T Services agreed to a $25 million settlement of an FCC investigation into call center employees in Mexico, Colombia and the Philippines who accessed records of almost 280,000 U.S. customers without authorization, at the time the FCC's largest data security enforcement action. Federal Communications Commission, news release
  3. 2019-11-05 Official AT&T Mobility agreed to pay $60 million to resolve the FTC's 2014 suit alleging it did not adequately disclose that it slowed unlimited-plan customers, more than 3.5 million of them, after as little as 2 gigabytes in a billing period. Federal Trade Commission, press release
  4. 2024-04-11 Official The FTC sent nearly $6.3 million in 267,734 payments to former AT&T customers who had been throttled, after about $52 million returned in 2020 through refunds and bill credits. Federal Trade Commission, press release
  5. 2024-07-22 Official An FCC bureau report found that a network change with a configuration error caused AT&T Mobility's February 22, 2024 nationwide outage, which lasted at least 12 hours, affected more than 125 million devices and blocked more than 92 million calls, including more than 25,000 to 911. It referred the matter to the Enforcement Bureau. FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, outage report and findings
  6. 2024-08-26 Official AT&T agreed to a $950,000 civil penalty and a three-year compliance plan to settle an FCC investigation into a 911 outage on August 22, 2023 in parts of Illinois, Kansas, Texas and Wisconsin. Federal Communications Commission, news release
  7. 2024-09-17 Official AT&T agreed to a $13 million civil penalty over a January 2023 breach of a vendor's cloud environment involving 8,931,656 AT&T Mobility customers, data the vendor should have returned or destroyed years earlier. Federal Communications Commission, consent decree DA 24-892
  8. 2024-10-25 Admitted AT&T agreed to pay $2,299,990, a $1,921,068 civil penalty plus $378,922 repaid, to settle FCC investigations into its Emergency Broadband Benefit and Affordable Connectivity Program claims, including 3,912 subscribers enrolled by reusing the same benefit-qualifying persons. It admitted the described facts for FCC enforcement purposes only. Federal Communications Commission, order and consent decree DA 24-1089
  9. 2026-05 Reported AT&T sued the California Public Utilities Commission and Attorney General Rob Bonta in federal court in Southern California, seeking an end to the state requirement that it keep offering traditional copper landline service to new customers, Broadband Breakfast reported. Broadband Breakfast report
  10. 2026-09-17 Reported Bonta and state regulators asked Judge Linda Lopez of the Southern District of California to dismiss AT&T's copper suit, arguing the carrier-of-last-resort rules do not require copper and are not preempted, Broadband Breakfast reported. Broadband Breakfast report

Securities and investor cases

  1. 2022-12-05 Official AT&T agreed to a $6.25 million penalty, the largest in a Regulation FD case, and three executives to $25,000 each, settling SEC charges that in March 2016 they privately gave about 20 analyst firms internal smartphone sales data; they neither admitted nor denied the allegations. Securities and Exchange Commission, press release 2022-215
  2. 2025-06-16 Reported Chief Judge David C. Godbey of the Northern District of Texas dismissed the investor suit claiming AT&T misled shareholders about lead-clad cables, finding some statements potentially misleading but no adequate showing of intent or severe recklessness; he gave the pension funds 30 days to amend. Broadband Breakfast report

Illinois bribery case

  1. 2022-10-14 Admitted AT&T Illinois agreed to pay $23 million under a deferred prosecution agreement, admitting it arranged in 2017 for an ally of then-Speaker Michael Madigan to receive $22,500 through a lobbying firm for no actual work, to influence Madigan on legislation the company wanted. U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of Illinois, press release
  2. 2025-10-14 Reported Former AT&T Illinois president Paul La Schiazza, whose 2024 bribery trial ended in a hung jury, entered a one-year deferred prosecution agreement with a $200,000 fine, admitting he intended to bribe Madigan, Capitol News Illinois reported; his January retrial was canceled. Capitol News Illinois report

Antitrust: the Time Warner merger

  1. 2017-11-20 Filed The United States Department of Justice sued AT&T, DirecTV Group Holdings and Time Warner in federal court in Washington, D.C., to block the vertical merger. U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, case page
  2. 2019-02-26 Ruled The D.C. Circuit affirmed the 2018 district court ruling, issued after trial, that denied the government a permanent injunction, rejecting its challenge to the findings on its increased-leverage theory. U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, opinion, No. 18-5214

Documents

Sources behind this file

  1. Justice Department Antitrust Division sections and offices page ยท Public record, Jul 10, 2025

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