Kroll’s AT&T Settlement Update: Payouts, Timing, and Delays

The Kroll AT&T settlement update as of mid-2026 is straightforward: the $177 million class action deal is still waiting on final approval from Judge Ada Brown of the Northern District of Texas, no payments have been distributed, and every deadline that applied to class members has already passed. Kroll Settlement Administration LLC continues to review submitted claims while the court’s ruling remains pending.¹

Where Things Stand Right Now

Judge Brown held the final approval hearing on January 15, 2026. It ran about six hours and included argument over the settlement classes, the opt-out policy, and the attorney fee requests.² She has not yet ruled. There is no public timeline for when a decision will come.¹

The claim submission deadline was December 18, 2025, and the opt-out and objection deadline was November 17, 2025.³ Claim forms are no longer available. If you did not file by December 18, there is no path to reopen that window.

When Payments Could Actually Arrive

Three things have to happen before any money moves. The court has to grant final approval. The window for appeals has to close. Kroll has to finish reviewing every claim form submitted.³

Even if Judge Brown approves the deal, an appeal by an objector could push distribution back further. AT&T has said throughout the case that it denies responsibility for the “criminal acts” behind the breaches and agreed to settle to avoid the cost and uncertainty of continued litigation.⁴

What Approved Claimants Can Expect to Receive

The $177 million is split into two non-reversionary funds: $149 million tied to the first breach and $28 million tied to the second. Each fund is reduced first by administration costs, court-approved attorney fees and expenses, service awards, and taxes. What is left is the Net Settlement Fund that gets paid out.⁵

Payments fall into these categories:

Documented Loss, first breach: up to $5,000 for financial losses in 2019 or later that trace to the first breach.
Tier 1, first breach: a pro rata share for people whose Social Security numbers were exposed. Tier 1 pays five times the Tier 2 rate.
Tier 2, first breach: a pro rata share for people whose non-SSN data was exposed.
Documented Loss, second breach: up to $2,500 for losses on or after April 14, 2024 that trace to the second breach.
Tier 3, second breach: a pro rata share of the second breach fund for account owners, as an alternative to the documented loss payment.¹

People affected by both breaches, called overlap members, can file against both funds, but the documentation for each claim must be unique. The theoretical maximum for someone with documented losses in both incidents is $7,500.⁴ For claimants without documented losses, Mashable reported that per-person payouts in data breach settlements of this size are often under $30.⁶

Kroll’s Role and How to Reach Them

Kroll Settlement Administration LLC is the court-appointed administrator. It runs the settlement website at telecomdatasettlement.com, processes claims, and staffs a contact center at (833) 890-4930.¹

If you filed a claim and need to update your mailing address, phone number, or email, do it through the settlement website or by phone. Legitimate settlement emails come from attsettlement@e.emailksa.com; anything else purporting to be about this case should be treated with skepticism.³

To add an extra layer of oversight, Judge Brown appointed Richard J. Arsenault as Special Claims Administration Master in September 2025. He supervises Kroll’s fraud prevention and detection, decides disputes over rejected or reduced claims, and reports to the court.⁷ Arsenault filed a status report declaration on January 8, 2026, and Judge Brown approved his fees for October through December 2025 on January 21, 2026.⁸

Which Breaches the Settlement Covers

The deal resolves two incidents AT&T disclosed in 2024. The first, announced March 30, 2024, involved a data set on the dark web with Social Security numbers, addresses, birthdates, passcodes, and phone numbers for roughly 7.6 million current and 65.4 million former customers, with data dating to 2019 or earlier.⁹

The second, disclosed July 12, 2024, involved call and text metadata pulled from a poorly secured third-party Snowflake cloud storage platform. It covered nearly all AT&T cellular customers and included phone numbers, call durations, and dates for May 1 through October 31, 2022, plus a smaller subset from January 2, 2023. Call and text content, names, Social Security numbers, and credit card details were not exposed. Landline customers and non-AT&T customers who had communicated with an affected number during that period were also swept in.¹⁰

Attorney Fees and the Objections That Are Slowing Things Down

Plaintiffs’ counsel asked the court to approve $59 million in combined fees, one-third of the settlement funds. The Lanier Law Firm requested $49.67 million plus up to $564,792 in costs; Kopelowitz Ostrow requested $9.33 million plus up to $231,438 in costs.² Each named class representative was slated to receive $1,500 in service awards, subject to court approval.¹¹

A group of objectors, Osa Massen, Audrey Jones, and Susan Savala, moved to intervene and oppose preliminary approval. Judge Brown denied the motion without prejudice.¹¹ Objections and the fee dispute were among the topics argued at the January 15, 2026 final approval hearing, and the court’s silence since that hearing is the reason no distribution date exists.²

If you have a submitted claim, keep your contact information current with Kroll and watch for correspondence from attsettlement@e.emailksa.com. There is nothing else to do until the court rules.

1
Telecom Data Settlement. AT&T Data Incident Settlement
2
Greenwich Time. AT&T Data Breach Settlement Attorney Fees
3
Telecom Data Settlement. AT&T Data Incident Settlement FAQ
4
CNN. AT&T Data Leak Settlement
5
CCH. AT&T Settlement Agreement
6
Mashable. AT&T Data Breach Settlement Claim
7
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas. Case Management Order #15
8
CourtListener. In Re AT&T Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litigation Docket
9
AT&T. Addressing Data Set Released on Dark Web
10
Mozilla Foundation. AT&T Had a Huge Data Breach
11
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas. Preliminary Approval Order