T-Mobile has agreed to pay $500 million to resolve a class-action lawsuit stemming from the 2021 hack, which it claims exposed the personal information of 76.6 million US people. T-Mobile will pay $350 million into a settlement fund for lawyers, costs, and, of course, people who submit claims, according to the proposed deal filed on Friday, which you can read in full below. In addition to what it had already budgeted for, it will be compelled to spend $150 million on “data security and related technology” in 2022 and 2023.
Following claims that Social Security numbers, names, addresses, and driver’s license information for over 100 million of its clients were for sale, the firm announced in August that its systems had been compromised. While the amount was significantly exaggerated, T-estimate Mobile’s of how many individuals were affected continued to grow over the month. T-CEO Mobile’s described the security compromise, the company’s fifth in four years, as “humbling.”
The proposed settlement deal must still be authorized by a judge, but if it is, T-Mobile will have 10 days to deposit funds into the fund to cover the costs of alerting those who are qualified to file claims. The agreement includes “the approximately 76.6 million U.S. residents identified by T-Mobile whose information was stolen in the Data Breach,” with a few exceptions for some of the carrier’s workers and persons connected to the judges who presided over the case. In the interest of full transparency, this could very well mean that I’m eligible for reimbursement because I was a T-Mobile user at the time of the breach.
The settlement agreement does not provide estimates of how much each claimant can expect to receive, but it is difficult to do so until it is known how many people will file claims.
