ELIGIBLE Americans have the chance to claim a cool $5,000 as part of a whopping $177million data breach – and these are the details you need to get the cash.
Current and former AT&T customers may be entitled to get the massive payout after the firm settled a lawsuit relating to two data breaches.
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Telecommunications giant AT&T announced in July 2024 that call and text message records of nearly all of its cellular customers were exposed in a shocking data leak.
In March of the same year, the firm previously said it was probing a data set released on the “dark web”.
AT&T admitted that hackers downloaded customer data from one of its cloud systems, after spotting the breach in April.
They revealed that its call logs were copied from its workspace on a Snowflake cloud platform.
It covered around six months of customer call and text data from 2022 – of nearly all of its customers.
An analysis concluded that approximately 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders had information appear on the “dark web.”
The information included addresses, Social Security numbers and passcodes from 2019 and earlier.
The phone services company told Reuters it denied allegations it was “responsible for these criminal acts.”
They said: “We have agreed to this settlement to avoid the expense and uncertainty of protracted litigation.”
AT&T have now agreed to pay up to $2,500 or $5,000 to customers who suffered “fairly traceable” losses.
The firm is coughing up a whopping $177million to settle two massive data breaches.
A total of £149million has been earmarked for victims of a 2024 hack.
Meanwhile, another £28million will be going to those caught up in a 2019 leak, court papers reveal.
Following payments made for direct losses, the remaining funds will be shared among customers whose personal information was accessed.
The firm said it expects payments to those affected to be issued early next year.
If you want to claim the cash, the deadline is listed for later this year.
Eligible customers need to submit a valid claim form by November 18.
Qualified Americans also have the chance to pocket a huge $5,000 payment as part of a whopping $2.3million data breach settlement – and they only need one receipt.
Food distribution giant Sysco has agreed to pay out the massive multimillion-dollar settlement to resolve claims over a major data breach.
The deal benefits people in the United States who received a notice from Sysco about the data breach around May 2023.
According to the lawsuit, the breach could have been prevented if the company had taken reasonable cybersecurity precautions.
They say that the failure to act led to personal information falling into the wrong hands.
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