T-Mobile Pitches $4-Per-Customer Settlement for Data Leak Impacting 80M People
After leaking 80 million US customer data records in a cyberattack last summer, T-Mobile offers to settle a wide-ranging class action suit for just $350 million.
Names, driver's licenses, and even Social Security numbers of more than 80 million T-Mobile customers in the US were compromised in a cyberattack last summer. Now T-Mobile is offering the victims a settlement in a class-action lawsuit stemming from the breach. It's cold comfort to victims, though — the compensation works out to just over $4 per person.
In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company said it would pay $350 million to fund customer claims, and pick up the attorneys' fees and administrative costs of handling the payouts. The mobile carrier also pledged to invest an additional $150 million in cybersecurity through 2023.
Altogether the company said the settlement offer would cost T-Mobile $400 million in the second quarter of 2022. To put that in perspective, T-Mobile's US revenue for the 12 months ending March 31 was $80.5 billion, a 4.46% increase year-over-year.
The T-Mobile SEC filing added that the settlement doesn't come with any admission of liability, wrongdoing, or responsibility on the part of the company, and added that T-Mobile expects to receive court approval of the settlement terms by as early as December.
The proposed penalty is in line with similar data breach settlements, like the $190 million settlement Capital One reached for leaking 100 million credit card applications from the US and another 6 million from Canada in a 2019 cyberattack — less than $2 per victim.
As a financial institution, Capital One was also ordered to pay an $80 million fine to Federal Reserve regulators. Both sums are a drop in the bucket for the corporate giant. Capital One's annual net income for 2021 was $12 billion, a 403.79% increase from 2020.
About the Author
You May Also Like
Unleashing AI to Assess Cyber Security Risk
Nov 12, 2024Securing Tomorrow, Today: How to Navigate Zero Trust
Nov 13, 2024The State of Attack Surface Management (ASM), Featuring Forrester
Nov 15, 2024Applying the Principle of Least Privilege to the Cloud
Nov 18, 2024The Right Way to Use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Incident Response
Nov 20, 2024