T-Mobile agrees to cough up $500 million for its disastrous data breach last year
It might have been almost a year ago, but T-Mobile’s bigAugust 2021 data breachis still fresh in some people’s minds. After all, the theft of data (including addresses and Social Security numbers) from tens of millions of users is nothing to scoff at. The carrier has since been fighting class-action lawsuits all over the country due to the breach. Now, after trials and negotiations, it is preparing for some hefty payouts in order to settle the matter.
As reported byReuters, T-Mobile has filed a preliminary settlement with a federal court in Kansas City, Missouri. The company has offered to pay out $350 million to affected customers and commit $150 million to strengthen its security measures for a total bill of $500 million. The settlement will still need to be approved by a judge which is expected to happen by December.
Class members could receive a total of $25 in cash or $100 if they’re in California, as well as two years of identity theft protection. Some of them might receive up to $25,000 if they were materially impacted by the breach and had to cope with out-of-pocket losses. The settlement covers at least 44 proposed class-action lawsuits across the United States. The plaintiffs' lawyers might seek fees from the settlement of at least 30%, or $105 million.
John Binns, a 21-year-old American residing in Turkey, took credit for the attack last year. T-Mobile, for its part, denied any wrongdoing, including claims of inadequate data security. Nonetheless, it’s committing money in addition to the actual settlement amount in the hopes that its upgrades will help prevent future breaching episodes — after all, it’s not the first time T-Mobile’s been compromised, with twobacktobackbreaching episodes in 2020. And while this leak from last year is the latest to date,other breachesandclose callshave happened since. It’s clear T-Mobile needs to step up and commit efforts to combat the issue.
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