T-Mobile US to cough up $550m after info stolen on 77m customers

T-Mobile US has agreed to pay about $550 million to end legal action against it and improve its security after crooks infiltrated the self-described Un-carrier last summer and harvested personal data belonging to almost 77 million customers. The cellular network operator (2021 net income: $3 billion) agreed to pay $350 million …

[VoiceOfTruth]

A bit of maths

350 million / 76.6 million = 4.57 in round numbers.

That leaves 200 million / very small number of lawyers = very large amounts for a very few people.

Yep, the best legal system money can buy.

[diodesign]

Re: A bit of maths

OTOH $550m is ~18% of T-Mobile US's 2021 net income of $3b. About a fifth of annual profit.

And FWIW it's $350m for the final class action, $150m on better security (ker-ching, vendors), and the rest on other settlements, totaling $550m.

C.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: A bit of maths

You're right. It isn't $200 million just for the lawyers. The point I really wanted to make was the pittance that is given to those whose data was actually taken.

[Kev99]

Re: A bit of maths

You're absolutely right. The people who were harmed get pennies on the dollar while the lawyers get new mansions. I think a fairer settlement for the one harmed would be the total settlement go to them and T-Mobile (and other class action defendants across the board) pay ALL legal fees, court costs, and any other expenses related to the litigation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe too common-sense an approach here, but...

why not simply not collect the data in the first place? Why would they need social security numbers or drivers license data at all? No data stored means no data to get stolen.

[doublelayer]

Re: Maybe too common-sense an approach here, but...

I think some of that is for credit checks, because instead of asking people to pay for service and them deliver it, they want to play games by lending people a locked phone until they've paid it off. I'm not sure if you can easily sell a phone locked to a provider that the provider probably has all the details for, but since someone could try to take that before paying for it, the company collects data to see if they're likely to be able to pay. It could be done a lot more simply, but that's my guess as to the excuse they'd provide for having it.

I think the US still allows people to have a phone contract anonymously, but another reason could be registration of numbers. I know some countries are significantly stricter about having each phone number (and probably device too) associated with a verified person. Possibly they collect that data even if not required to in case such a restriction is added. Similar to the last one, I dislike this approach if it turns out to be their reasoning, but it wouldn't surprise me to hear them say it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be time limits how long to keep data

Still a big steamy load of ****

I was caught up in this and I haven't been a tmo customer for almost 15 years, maybe a bit longer!

They don't even have service where I live, this was back when I lived in a different state.

They should at least have to pay for a lifetime if monitoring services.... Heck I'm old now, so they wouldn't even have to pay that long... lol

stupid stupid stupid

[Kolobos36]

Seriously?

Seriously? My data is stolen and my identity compromised and I don't even get a full $5? How about they add in Monitoring services? or SOMETHING to actually make up for this?

What an effin' joke.