AT&T Class Action Lawsuit Settlement: Classes, Payouts, and Timeline

The AT&T class action lawsuit settlement is a $177 million deal resolving claims from two data breaches the company disclosed in 2024. It covers roughly 73 million people caught in a dark-web data leak and nearly all AT&T wireless customers whose call and text records were stolen from a third-party cloud platform. The claim deadline was December 18, 2025, and as of April 2026 the federal judge overseeing the case has not issued final approval, so no payments have been sent.¹

What the Settlement Covers

The lawsuits were consolidated as In Re: AT&T Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, under Judge Ada Brown (MDL No. 3:24-md-03114-E).² The parties reached agreement in March 2025 on a combined $177 million, split into two non-reversionary cash funds. AT&T did not admit wrongdoing.³

The two breaches behind the settlement are distinct. On March 30, 2024, AT&T confirmed that a dataset of customer information had been released on the dark web. It affected about 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders, with exposed fields varying by person: names, mailing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, AT&T account numbers, and account passcodes. The data appeared to date from 2019 or earlier.⁴

On July 12, 2024, AT&T disclosed a separate incident in which hackers downloaded data from an AT&T workspace hosted on the Snowflake cloud analytics platform. This one involved call and text records for nearly all AT&T wireless customers covering May through October 2022, plus a small subset from January 2, 2023. The stolen data included phone numbers, the numbers customers interacted with, counts of those interactions, aggregate call durations, and in some cases cell site identifiers. Social Security numbers and similar identifiers were not part of this breach.⁵

Who Is in Each Class

The settlement creates two classes tied to the two breaches:

AT&T 1 Settlement Class, funded at $149 million: all living U.S. residents whose personal data, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and other account information, was part of the March 2024 dark-web leak.⁶
AT&T 2 Settlement Class, funded at $28 million: AT&T account owners and line and end users whose phone numbers and call/text interaction data were involved in the July 2024 Snowflake breach.⁶

People affected by both breaches count as overlap class members and were allowed to claim from both funds.⁵

How Much Claimants Can Receive

Claimants had to choose between two forms of compensation.

Documented loss payments. AT&T 1 class members can seek up to $5,000 for losses fairly traceable to the first breach, for losses occurring in 2019 or later. AT&T 2 class members can seek up to $2,500 for losses occurring on or after April 14, 2024. Someone in both classes could recover up to $7,500 in documented losses.⁷

Tiered pro rata cash payments. Claimants who did not submit documented losses instead share their fund proportionally. In the AT&T 1 class, Tier 1 covers people whose Social Security numbers were exposed, and Tier 2 covers those whose other information was exposed. Tier 3 applies to the AT&T 2 class.⁶

Individual amounts under the pro rata option will depend on how many valid claims were filed, how many documented-loss claims came in, and what the court approves for attorney fees and administrative costs. About 4.38 million people filed claims before the deadline, a claims rate of roughly 4.8 percent against a class of nearly 100 million.⁸ With that many claimants dividing the funds, pro rata payments are likely to be modest.

Where the Case Stands and When Payments Could Arrive

Judge Brown granted preliminary approval on June 20, 2025.⁹ A six-hour final approval hearing took place on January 15, 2026, covering the class definitions, the opt-out policy, and attorney fees. Plaintiffs’ counsel requested $59 million in fees, roughly one-third of the combined funds. About $49.67 million of that would go to the AT&T 1 legal team led by W. Mark Lanier and $9.33 million to the AT&T 2 team led by Jeff Ostrow, plus reimbursement of litigation costs.¹⁰

As of April 2026, the court had not ruled on final approval. No payments will be sent until the court approves the settlement, any appeals period runs out, and the administrator finishes reviewing claims. Kroll Settlement Administration LLC is running the claims process and can be reached at (833) 890-4930 or through the official settlement site at telecomdatasettlement.com.¹

Deadlines That Have Passed

The deadline to object to or opt out of the settlement was October 17, 2025.¹¹ The claim filing deadline was December 18, 2025, and claim forms are no longer available.¹ If you did not file by that date, you cannot submit a new claim now, and you will not receive a payment from either fund.

Other AT&T Settlements This Is Not

Two earlier AT&T consumer cases sometimes get confused with this one:

FTC data throttling settlement ($60 million, 2019). The Federal Trade Commission sued AT&T Mobility for misleading customers who bought “unlimited” data plans by throttling their speeds after a usage cap. AT&T paid $60 million, with $52 million returned to consumers in 2020. In 2024, the FTC distributed an additional $6.3 million to former customers who had not previously received refunds.¹²
Internet taxes settlement (MDL No. 2147). A separate class action alleged AT&T Mobility improperly collected taxes on certain wireless data services between 2005 and 2010, in violation of the Internet Tax Freedom Act. That case is fully resolved, with refunds distributed on a rolling basis as taxing jurisdictions process them.¹³

Neither of those has any bearing on eligibility or payment under the $177 million data breach settlement.

1
Telecom Data Settlement. In Re AT&T Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litigation
2
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas. MDL 3:24-md-03114
3
WKBN. All You Need to Know: AT&T Settlement Info in Data Breach Case
4
AT&T. Addressing Data Set Released on Dark Web
5
6abc. AT&T Data Breach $177 Million Settlement
6
Business.cch.com. AT&T Settlement Agreement
7
Yahoo Finance. AT&T Data Breach Class Action Settlement
8
CT Post. AT&T Data Breach Settlement: Claims Filed
9
CFO Dive. Judge Approves AT&T $177M Settlement Over Data Breach
10
Greenwich Time. AT&T Data Breach Settlement Attorney Fees
11
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas. Preliminary Approval Order, MDL 3114
12
FTC. FTC Sends Refunds to Former AT&T Wireless Customers
13
AT&T Mobility Settlement. In Re AT&T Mobility Wireless Data Services Sales Tax Litigation