AT&T Customers Could Get $5K in $177M Settlement

If you are an AT&T customer or were one in 2019 or the early 2020s, the telecom giant may owe you a cut of a $177 million class action legal settlement. And you could walk away with up to $5,000, though most people will get only a small fraction of that. A Dallas federal district judge granted final approval of the settlement on Oct. 2, 2026.

Eligible customers can expect to receive payments in the coming weeks and likely by year-end. But you would have had to have submitted a claim by Dec. 18, 2025, which about 5 million people did, according to Kroll, the court-appointed administrator.

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Class actions are legal procedures that allow one plaintiff or a small number of plaintiffs to pursue a case on behalf of a larger group of people. How much money you may receive in a case depends in part on the number of people who file a claim, minus attorney and other fees.

Recent data breaches put Social Security numbers, birth dates and other personal information in the hands of criminals who trade it on the dark web. As part of the settlement, AT&T admitted no wrongdoing.

“While we deny the allegations in these lawsuits that we were responsible for these criminal acts, we have agreed to this settlement to avoid the expense and uncertainty of protracted litigation,” AT&T said in a statement shared last year with AARP. “We remain committed to protecting our customers’ data and ensuring their continued trust in us.”

In 2024, AT&T disclosed a cyberattack of a third-party cloud storage provider in which phone and text records from “nearly all” of AT&T’s cellular customers were hacked during a six-month period in 2022. The stolen haul identified other phone numbers, including landlines, that an AT&T wireless number interacted with from May 1 to October 31, 2022, and on January 2, 2023. Hacked data from an even earlier incident dates to 2019 or before. That attack affected about 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and 65.4 million former customers. The payment eligible AT&T customers will receive depends on which of two “settlement class” groups they are part of.

Those in Settlement Class 1, which includes all living people in the U.S. whose names, account numbers, passcodes, Social Security numbers and other data were included in the incident, can receive up to $5,000 for documented losses that can be traced to the breach occurring in or after 2019. Otherwise, those eligible in Class 1 will receive a tiered pro rata share of the settlement that will be substantially smaller, with estimates in court documents of around $40.

Those in Settlement Class 2, which includes AT&T account holders whose phone numbers and other call data were associated with the incident, can receive up to $2,500 for documented losses that occurred on or after April 14, 2024. Otherwise, they, too, will receive a far smaller cash payment based on the total funds available, with estimates ranging from $6.50 to $8.10.

Details are spelled out on a settlement website. You can also call 833-890-4930 with questions.

As of the middle of last year, 19 percent of AT&T’s current subscribers were older than 60, according to a survey from telecom analyst Roger Entner of Recon Analytics in Dedham, Massachusetts. In comparison, 22 percent of Verizon’s customers and 17 percent of T-Mobile’s are in that age group.