T-Mobile agrees to pay $350 mn in data breach affecting 77 mn users

San Francisco: Telecommunications company T-Mobile has agreed to pay $500 million to settle a class-action lawsuit in a 2021 data breach that impacted nearly 76.6 million users’ data in the US.

T-Mobile will put $350 million into a settlement fund to go to lawyers, fees, and the affected, according to the proposed agreement filled on Friday.

The company will also spend an extra $150 million on “data security and related technology” during 2022 and 2023, reports The Verge.

In August last year, the company admitted its systems were hacked into, including social security numbers, names, addresses, and driver’s license information.

The settlement covers “the approximately 76.6 million US residents identified by T- Mobile whose information was compromised in the Data Breach”.

Initially, T-Mobile had admitted that nearly 47.8 million customers were affected in a latest data breach.

T-Mobile, which has more than 100 million customers, said its preliminary analysis found that approximately 7.8 million current T-Mobile postpaid customer accounts’ information appears to be contained in the stolen files, as well as just over 40 million records of former or prospective customers who had previously applied for credit with T-Mobile.

Reports surfaced that hackers were selling the T-Mobile data for six Bitcoins ($270,000) on the Dark Web.

T-Mobile has been the target of several data breaches in the last few years.

In December last year, T-Mobile confirmed that recent reports of a new data breach are linked to notifications sent to a “very small number of customers” who fell victim to SIM swap attacks.

The recent cyberattack came after the massive data breach the company suffered in August.

Another report claimed recently that T-Mobile is allegedly selling user information to marketers. However, customers have the option to check which companies have access to their data and can opt-out entirely.

T-Mobile’s new programme is called App Insights, and it is now fully operational after spending a year in beta, citing Ad Exchanger, The Verge reported.