Is the AT&T data breach settlement still open?

No. The claim deadline for the AT&T data breach settlement was December 18, 2025, and it has passed. New claims can no longer be submitted.

How much was the AT&T data breach settlement?

AT&T agreed to a total settlement of $177,000,000, split into a $149 million fund for the AT&T 1 Data Incident and a $28 million fund for the AT&T 2 Data Incident. The court approved attorneys' fees of one-third of each fund, about $59 million in total, which come out of the funds before class members are paid.

How much could class members receive?

Class members could claim up to $5,000 for documented losses tied to the AT&T 1 Data Incident, or up to $2,500 for documented losses tied to the AT&T 2 Data Incident. Those without documented losses receive a pro rata tier payment. Kroll's estimates, cited in the October 2, 2026 final approval order, are about $39 to $40 for Tier 1 (Social Security number exposed), $7.50 to $8.10 for Tier 2 and $6.50 to $7.10 for Tier 3, contingent on certain variables.

Who qualified for the AT&T data breach settlement?

People whose information was included in the AT&T 1 Data Incident (announced March 30, 2024) or AT&T account owners and users whose data was involved in the AT&T 2 Data Incident (announced July 12, 2024) qualified.

When will AT&T settlement payments be sent?

No payment date had been announced as of October 4, 2026. The court granted final approval on October 2, 2026. As described in the approval order, the settlement agreement calls for payments within 60 days after the Effective Date, and the official settlement website says benefits are paid only after any appeals are resolved. About 45 objectors opposed the settlement, so the timing depends on whether any of them appeals.

What is the Effective Date of the AT&T settlement?

The Effective Date has not happened yet. The settlement agreement defines it as 10 days after the time to appeal the final approval order runs out, or, if someone appeals, 30 days after the last appellate ruling affirming approval or 30 days after an appeal is dismissed with no further right to appeal. If no appeal is filed and the 30-day appeal period runs from the October 2, 2026 order, the Effective Date would fall around November 12, 2026, and Kroll's deadline to pay class members, 60 days later, would be around January 11, 2027. Neither the court nor Kroll has announced those dates, and an appeal, or an appeal clock that runs from a later separate judgment, would push them back.

AT&T Data Breach Settlement 2026: Payout Date & Status

Published August 4, 2025

Updated October 4, 2026

AT&T customers whose data was exposed in the company’s two 2024 data breaches had their $177 million class action settlement approved by a federal judge on October 2, 2026. Claims closed December 18, 2025, and no payment date has been announced.

By Steve Levine

Editor-in-Chief

Current Status

Claims are closed; the deadline was December 18, 2025. Senior U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater granted final approval on October 2, 2026, and Kroll estimates tier payments of about $39 to $40 where a Social Security number was exposed and $6.50 to $8.10 for the other tiers. No payment date had been announced as of October 4, 2026, and payments wait until any appeals are resolved. Our report on the final approval order covers what the judge decided.

What Was the AT&T Data Breach Class Action Settlement?

More than 100 million consumers were affected by one or both of two major AT&T data breach incidents disclosed in 2024. AT&T agreed to a $177 million class action settlement resolving allegations that it failed to adequately protect customer data exposed in those breaches.

According to CNET, the AT&T data breach settlement covered up to 182 million people across the two incidents. The first data breach affected about 73 million current and former customers, while the second impacted around 109 million. Some individuals were part of both, so the total number of unique claimants was lower. AT&T denied all wrongdoing and liability.

Status Final Approval Granted — Payments Pending Approved October 2, 2026 · no payment date announced as of October 4, 2026

Claim Deadline December 18, 2025 (Passed) 4,918,073 claims received · about 3.92 million allowed

Estimated Payout Up to $5,000 documented losses · or est. $39–$40 (SSN exposed), $7.50–$8.10 or $6.50–$7.10 tier cash

Proof Required Yes Notice ID plus name or AT&T account number required to file

What Was the Total Settlement Amount?

The settlement fund was used to pay qualifying class members, cover settlement administration costs, and pay any attorney fees, legal costs, or service awards approved by the court — for a total of $177,000,000, broken into two separate funds:

• AT&T 1 Settlement Fund: $149 million in cash to resolve all claims related to the AT&T 1 Data Incident.
• AT&T 2 Settlement Fund: $28 million in cash to resolve all claims related to the AT&T 2 Data Incident.

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Who Qualified for a Payout?

You were eligible if your data was included in the AT&T 1 Data Incident (announced March 30, 2024), or if you were an AT&T account owner or user whose data was involved in the AT&T 2 Data Incident (announced July 12, 2024).

You were part of:

• AT&T Settlement Class 1 if your personally identifiable information (e.g., name, address, SSN) was included in the AT&T 1 Data Incident.
• AT&T Settlement Class 2 if you were an AT&T Account Owner or Line/End User whose telephone-related data was involved in the AT&T 2 Data Incident.

Overlap Settlement Class Members were those involved in both breaches.

How Much Could Class Members Get?

• AT&T Data Breach 1: Up to $5,000 for documented losses, or a pro rata share of the $149 million fund (Tier 1 paid 5x Tier 2 if a Social Security number was exposed; Tier 2 applied if no SSN was exposed).

• AT&T Data Breach 2: Up to $2,500 for documented losses, or a pro rata share of the $28 million fund (Tier 3). Final amounts depended on the number of valid claims and deductions for fees and costs.

What Was the Difference Between the Two AT&T Data Breaches?

Data Breach 1: Announced March 30, 2024, this breach involved AT&T-specific fields contained in a data set released on the dark web. The exposed personally identifiable information may have included names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, account passcodes, billing account numbers, and Social Security numbers.

Data Breach 2: Announced July 12, 2024, this breach involved limited data illegally downloaded from an AT&T workspace on a third-party cloud platform hosted by Snowflake. The exposed data included telephone numbers of current and former AT&T customers, telephone numbers interacted with, counts of those interactions, aggregate call durations, and — for a small subset of individuals — one or more cell site identification numbers associated with the interactions.

Was Proof Required to File a Claim?

Yes. Claimants had to provide their Notice ID along with their full name or AT&T account number. For documented loss payments, claimants also had to provide reasonable documentation (e.g., receipts or other non-self-prepared evidence) showing losses traceable to the data incidents.

Notices began going out to impacted customers on August 4, 2025 and were wrapped up by October 17, 2025, according to court documents.

Final Approval & When Payments Will Be Sent

Senior U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater of the Northern District of Texas granted final approval of the settlement on October 2, 2026, in a 73-page memorandum opinion and order. The case was reassigned to Judge Fitzwater on August 17, 2026, after U.S. District Judge Ada E. Brown, who held the January 15, 2026 fairness hearing, recused while the approval motion was pending. The order overruled the objections to the settlement except one concerning leftover funds, approved attorneys’ fees of one-third of each fund (about $59 million in total), and approved $1,500 service awards for each of the 36 class representatives.

No payment date had been announced as of October 4, 2026. As the order describes the settlement agreement, payments go out electronically or by paper check within 60 days after the settlement’s Effective Date, and the official settlement website says benefits are paid only after any appeals are resolved. About 45 objectors opposed the settlement, so the start of payments depends on whether any of them appeals. Our report on the final approval order covers the ruling in detail, and our AT&T settlement payment update tracks the payment schedule.

When Is the Effective Date?

The Effective Date has not happened yet, and it is not a date anyone picks. The settlement agreement defines it with a formula (¶69): it falls 10 days after the time to appeal the final approval order runs out. If someone appeals, it is instead 30 days after the last appellate ruling affirming the approval, or 30 days after an appeal is dismissed with no further right to appeal. AT&T must fund the rest of the settlement within 15 days of the Effective Date (¶119), and Kroll must distribute payments no later than 60 days after it (¶173).

If no one appeals, and the 30-day federal appeal period runs from the October 2, 2026 order, the dates work out as follows:

AT&T settlement timeline if no appeal is filed
Step	Rule	Date
Final approval order entered	Memorandum opinion and order, ECF No. 85	October 2, 2026
Last day to file an appeal	30 days after the order; the 30th day is Sunday, November 1, so the deadline moves to Monday	November 2, 2026
Effective Date	10 days after the appeal period runs out (¶69)	About November 12, 2026
AT&T funds the rest of the settlement	Within 15 days of the Effective Date (¶119)	By about November 27, 2026
Kroll’s deadline to pay class members	No later than 60 days after the Effective Date (¶173)	By about January 11, 2027

These dates are calculated from the agreement’s terms; neither the court nor Kroll has announced them. An appeal by an objector would hold the Effective Date until the Fifth Circuit rules, which commonly takes many months to more than a year. The appeal clock may also start later than October 2: federal appeal deadlines usually run from entry of a separate final judgment, and if none is entered, the federal rules treat judgment as entered 150 days after the order, which would put the appeal deadline around March 31, 2027 and push every later date back by about five months. Nothing in the agreement requires anyone to announce the Effective Date; the signals are a notice of appeal or final judgment on the court docket and any payment update Kroll posts on the official settlement website.

Kroll reported 4,918,073 claims received. Of those, 1,654,046 were allowed as Tier 1, 687,859 as Tier 2 and 1,582,248 as Tier 3, while 1,099,732 were rejected as late, duplicate, fraudulent, released, withdrawn or from ineligible businesses. Fraud screening by the firm Covalynt flagged 804,381 claims, about 16% of the total. A claimant flagged as fraudulent is notified by email and can seek review by mailing a hand-signed Validation Form, in its own envelope, postmarked within 21 days of that email.

Denial notices: Kroll is notifying some claimants that their claims were denied. Those claimants must mail a signed Denial Response Form postmarked by October 17, 2026; email and Contact Us submissions are not accepted. See our guide to the AT&T denial notices.

Important: There has been no official announcement that class settlement payments have started. Reports of people receiving AT&T-related payments may relate to separate individual arbitration claims or another AT&T matter, not this Kroll-administered $177 million class settlement.

Estimated Payment Amounts

The final approval order cites Kroll’s current estimates for the no-documentation tiers, which depend on certain variables: about $39 to $40 for Tier 1 (AT&T 1 class members whose Social Security number was exposed), about $7.50 to $8.10 for Tier 2 (AT&T 1 class members without an exposed Social Security number) and about $6.50 to $7.10 for Tier 3 (AT&T 2 account owners). Documented-loss claims are paid first and instead of a tier payment, up to $5,000 under AT&T 1 and up to $2,500 under AT&T 2, and the two funds are calculated separately. These are estimates, not amounts anyone has been paid.

Sources

• Official Settlement Website: TelecomDataSettlement.com
• Official Settlement FAQ: TelecomDataSettlement.com/faq
• Official Press Release: PR Newswire — AT&T Data Incident Settlement Notice
• Settlement Agreement: Settlement Agreement and Release, ECF No. 283-1, ¶¶ 69, 119 and 173
• Final Approval Order: Memorandum Opinion and Order, ECF No. 85 (October 2, 2026), on the CourtListener docket for MDL No. 3114
• News Reporting: CNET

Filing Class Action Settlement Claims

Please note that claim forms submitted with fraudulent information are rejected, and false claims may carry penalties under the penalty of perjury. Filing a false claim also harms others who actually qualify. If you were unsure whether you qualified for this settlement, you could review the official notice on the settlement administrator's website. OpenClassActions.com is a consumer advocacy and class action news site, and is not a class action administrator or a law firm. OpenClassActions is a participant in the Amazon affiliate advertising program, and this post may contain affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission or fees if you make a purchase via those links.

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Settlement Amount $177,000,000

Case Title In re: AT&T Inc. Customer Data Security Breach Litigation

Case Number 3:24-md-03114-D (MDL No. 3114)

Court U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas

Claim Deadline December 18, 2025 (Passed)

Final Approval Granted October 2, 2026 Senior U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater · hearing held January 15, 2026

Administrator Kroll Settlement Administration

Official Website Telecom Data Settlement.com