If you're expecting money from T-Mobile, there's good news: Your check should be just about on its way.
As spotted by PCMag, T-Mobile's data breach settlement page now reports the following: "All court proceedings are now complete. The distribution of settlement payments is expected to begin April 2025." So long as payments roll out on time, claimants can expect their checks to start shipping out sometime this month.
Why was T-Mobile sued?
These payments are tied to a class-action lawsuit from an August 2021 data breach. Hackers stole information from tens of million of current and former T-Mobile customers, including first and last names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, and driver's license information. T-Mobile originally claimed the hackers only compromised the data of 7.8 million current customers and 40 million former customers, but customers filed the lawsuit alleging the true number was around 76 million.
While T-Mobile did not admit fault, the company did settle the suit, agreeing to a $350 million settlement payout. In addition, the company had to pay $150 million to beef up its security around customer data. The entire debacle cost T-Mobile half a billion dollars.
How much are the payments?
How much claimants actually receive from this settlement could be dependent on the amount of time and money they spent trying to fix their security issues. Claimants had to show documentation of their efforts, and could be reimbursed for both the money spent as well as an additional $25 per hour to compensate for their time—for a maximum possible payout of $25,000. Alternatively, victims could simply accept a $25 payment to put the entire case to rest. (If you lived in California at the time, that payout jumped to $100.)
Unfortunately, it's far too late to claim a payment in this case—that deadline ended on January 23, 2023. If you made a claim, you should have been contacted in October of last year.
I'm sorry if this news is arriving too late for you to claim money from the suit. However, if you did make a claim before that 2023 deadline, your Monday probably just got a little better.
