AT&T is facing an avalanche of class-action lawsuits for last month's data leak, which initially appeared to ensnare as many as 73 million users.

A week ago, we reported on one of the first class-action lawsuits stemming from the breach. But since AT&T disclosed the incident on March 30, plaintiffs have filed approximately 30 lawsuits in Texas — where the carrier is headquartered — which allege a breach of contract.

PCMag only looked through a dozen of the complaints to avoid racking up court fees. But in those we viewed, the plaintiffs called for a class-action lawsuit against AT&T, claiming that the carrier failed to safeguard customers' personal data, including phone numbers, addresses, and in some cases, Social Security numbers and dates of birth.

“This data breach has and will lead to further devastating financial and personal losses to data breach victims,” one of the lawsuits says.

A hacking group called ShinyHunters started selling the stolen AT&T data back in 2021. But at the time, AT&T denied that the information had come from its systems. The mysterious leak then came back into the spotlight last month when a new user called MajorNelson began circulating another 5GB archive that appeared to contain the same AT&T data.

After initially dismissing the leak again, AT&T confirmed the archive’s legitimacy after a security researcher found customers’ AT&T passcodes in the data. This led the company to issue a notice to consumers, warning them about the breach. But in response, the class-action lawsuits claim AT&T failed to implement proper cybersecurity safeguards, and demand that the company pay damages to affected consumers.

“The data breach occurred in 2019 but [AT&T] did not begin informing victims...until March 30, 2024, approximately five years later,” one lawsuit points out. “During this time, Plaintiff and Class Members were unaware that their sensitive PII [personal identifying information] had been compromised, and that they were, and continue to be, at significant risk of identity theft and various other forms of personal, social, and financial harm.”

By: DocMemory
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