AT&T's $177 million settlement over its two 2024 data breaches has cleared its last big hurdle. A federal judge in Texas granted final approval on October 2, which means millions of customers who filed claims are now waiting on a payment. Most won't get much: estimates range from about $6.50 to $40 for people without documented losses. Here's who's covered, what each group should get and when the money could arrive.
What the Settlement Covers
The settlement resolves lawsuits over two separate incidents, each with its own fund:
- AT&T 1 ($149 million). A dataset posted on the dark web that AT&T announced on March 30, 2024. It involved about 73 million current and former customers, and the exposed details may have included names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, account passcodes and Social Security numbers.
- AT&T 2 ($28 million). Call and text records downloaded from an AT&T workspace on the Snowflake cloud platform, announced on July 12, 2024. It affected around 109 million people. The records included the phone numbers customers interacted with, how often and for how long.
The court approved the deal on October 2 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, OpenClassActions reported. AT&T has denied wrongdoing. “We have agreed to this settlement to avoid the expense and uncertainty of protracted litigation,” the company said last year, according to LiveNOW from FOX.
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How Much Each Group Should Get
If you didn't submit proof of losses, your payment depends on your tier. These are estimates from Kroll, the settlement administrator, as reported by OpenClassActions:
- Tier 1, about $39 to $40. AT&T 1 members whose Social Security number was exposed. The settlement sets this at five times the Tier 2 amount.
- Tier 2, about $7.50 to $8.10. AT&T 1 members whose other data was exposed, but not their Social Security number.
- Tier 3, about $6.50 to $7.10. AT&T 2 account owners affected by the Snowflake breach.
Customers who documented losses could claim up to $5,000 from the AT&T 1 fund or up to $2,500 from the AT&T 2 fund, instead of a tier payment. People in both groups can be paid from both funds, but the same documents can't support two loss claims.
The amounts are small partly because of how the money is split. AT&T received 4,918,073 claims, and about one third of each fund, roughly $59 million in total, goes to attorneys' fees. More than 1 million claims were rejected, including 804,381 flagged as fraudulent.
Can You Still File a Claim?
No. The deadline was December 18, 2025. Only people who filed by then will be paid.
When Payments Could Arrive
There's no official date yet. Under the settlement, payments go out electronically or by paper check within 60 days after the settlement's Effective Date, and that date depends on whether anyone appeals.
If no one does, the last day to appeal is November 2, 2026. That would put the Effective Date around November 12 and the payment deadline around January 11, 2027, according to OpenClassActions, which calculated those dates from the agreement. An appeal would push everything back, possibly by months.
What to Do Now
If you filed a claim, keep an eye on your email and the official settlement website, telecomdatasettlement.com, for updates. Be careful with any message that asks you to pay a fee or share your Social Security number to “release” your payment. Legitimate settlement payments don't work that way.
The payout won't be life-changing for most customers. But after two breaches that exposed data from more than 100 million people, it's the closest thing to compensation AT&T customers are going to get.
