30 lawsuits against AT&T for massive data breach get consolidated

• 30 lawsuits against AT&T related to a data breach revealed in March are being consolidated
• The suits will be combined in the Northern District of Texas
• One question in the suits asks if AT&T delayed in notifying customers

AT&T announced in March that the personal information of over 70 million former and current customers had been released on the dark web. That personal information included customer names, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, dates of birth, AT&T account numbers and passcodes.

Since AT&T’s disclosure, 30 class action lawsuits have been filed against company.

On June 5, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ruled that all the lawsuits will be consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The court said the lawsuits all involve common questions of fact and centralization in the Northern District of Texas will be convenient because AT&T’s headquarters is in Dallas, which is the location of many witnesses and case evidence.

The common factual questions in all the lawsuits include how and when the breach occurred, AT&T’s data security practices with respect to safeguarding personal information, the investigation into the breach, the alleged delay in disclosing the breach and the nature of any damages.

When AT&T announced the security breach, it stated: “AT&T has launched a robust investigation supported by internal and external cybersecurity experts. Based on our preliminary analysis, the data set appears to be from 2019 or earlier, impacting approximately 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and approximately 65.4 million former account holders.”

Frontier

AT&T isn’t the only one facing customers in the wake of a data breach.

Earlier this week, Fierce Network reported that Frontier Communications sent letters to its customers, alerting them that some of their personal information had been accessed by hackers during a recent cybersecurity breach that affected 751,895 customers.

Frontier said that on April 13 some data in its IT systems was breached, and it noticed the hack on April 14.

It is facing three class action lawsuits that were filed in Texas this week.