T-Mobile agreed to settle a class action in 2022 for $350 million, now T-Mobile customers will start receiving payments next month.

According to The Hill (T-Mobile customers to get payments up to $25K next month after data breach: Here’s who qualifies, written by Alix Martichoux and available here), after years of legal disputes and delays, the payments are set to be issued starting in April 2025, the settlement administrator said.

The class action lawsuit came after a cyberattack in August 2021 compromised the personal data of 76 million T-Mobile customers in the U.S. The data that was breached included customers’ names, addresses and Social Security numbers.

T-Mobile denied any wrongdoing in the data breach (of course!) but agreed to the $350 million payout to settle the lawsuit.

The size of the payment you receive will partially depend on how much time and money each customer lost as a result of the breach.

If you “spent money trying to avoid or recover from fraud or identity theft that you believe was fairly traceable to the T-Mobile Data Breach,” you qualify for the biggest payout: reimbursement of up to $25,000. These customers were instructed to provide documentation of their losses, which could include the time it took to freeze their credit, money spent on credit monitoring services, or losses resulting from identity theft.

T-Mobile customers who didn’t file that sort of documentation still get a piece of the settlement fund – just a much smaller one. If you didn’t claim any out-of-pocket losses but were impacted by the massive breach, you could receive a cash payment of up to $25 (or $100 for people who lived in California in August 2021). Those payment estimates are the maximum – not the minimum – amount customers should expect to receive when checks are issued next month.

I’ll be there will be a lot of hoops to jump through to qualify for that first group. Considering the settlement occurred in 2022, this illustrates how long it takes for customers to be compensated, not to mention just how costly data breaches can be.

So, what do you think? Are you in line for a $25,000 reimbursement from the settlement? If so, want to be my new friend? 🤣 Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image Copyright © TriStar Pictures

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.