Latest news with #MikeScarcella
USA Today
21-06-2025
- Business
- USA Today
AT&T to pay $177 million in data breach settlement affecting 109 million customers
A U.S. judge granted preliminary approval on Friday to a $177-million settlement that resolves lawsuits against AT&T T.N over breaches in 2024 that exposed personal information belonging to tens of millions of the telecom company's customers. U.S. District Judge Ada Brown in Dallas said in a ruling that the class-action settlement was fair and reasonable. The deal resolves claims over data breaches that AT&T announced in May and July last year. Depending on which breach is involved, AT&T has agreed to pay up to $2,500 or $5,000 to customers who suffered losses that are "fairly traceable" to the incidents. After payments are made for direct losses, the remaining funds will be distributed to customers whose personal information was accessed. In case you missed it: T-Mobile cyberattack settlement payments up to $25K delayed AT&T said it denied allegations it was "responsible for these criminal acts." "We have agreed to this settlement to avoid the expense and uncertainty of protracted litigation." AT&T said it expects the settlement will be approved by the end of 2025, with settlement payments to be issued early next year. One of the incidents resulted in the illegal downloading of about 109 million customer accounts at the U.S. wireless company. AT&T disclosed that its call logs were copied from its workspace on a Snowflake SNOW.N cloud platform covering about six months of customer call and text data from 2022 from nearly all its customers. In March 2024, AT&T said it was investigating a data set released on the "dark web" and said its preliminary analysis showed it affected approximately 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders. The company said the data set appeared to be from 2019 or earlier. The Federal Communications Commission is also investigating. In September, AT&T agreed to pay $13 million to resolve an FCC investigation over a data breach of a cloud vendor in January 2023 that impacted 8.9 million AT&T wireless customers. The FCC said the data exposed in 2023 covered customers from 2015 through 2017 that should have been deleted in 2017 or 2018. Reporting by Mike Scarcella and David Shepardson; Editing by Mark Porter, Leslie Adler and Rod Nickel
Time of India
17-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Apple must face consumer lawsuit over iCloud storage, US judge rules
By Mike Scarcella Apple must face a proposed class action accusing the iPhone maker of illegally monopolizing the market for digital storage and causing consumers to overpay for its iCloud service, a federal judge in California ruled on Monday. U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee in San Jose, California, said the plaintiffs in the case had sufficiently alleged Apple violated antitrust law by requiring iPhone customers to use its iCloud data storage service to back up core data and device setting files. Lee's new order revived the plaintiffs' lawsuit after she dismissed an earlier version of it. She said the consumers added substantial new allegations about the importance of data storage for all iPhone files, including restricted ones like settings data. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has denied any wrongdoing. An attorney for the consumers had no immediate comment on the ruling. A Los Angeles resident who said she was paying $2.99 monthly for an iCloud storage plan filed the lawsuit last year. Apple allows third-party storage for photos and videos but not for some users' data files that are needed to "restore" an Apple device. Apple has defended its policy as designed to guarantee high levels of security. The company also urged Lee to dismiss the plaintiff's claims as untimely. Plaintiffs generally face a four-year window to bring claims under U.S. antitrust law. In her ruling, Lee said it was premature to dismiss the claims as time-barred, but suggested the issue could be revisited later in the litigation. The plaintiff's lawyers want to represent a nationwide class of at tens of millions of consumers who purchased iCloud storage plans. The case is Felix Gamboa v. Apple Inc , U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 5:24-cv-01270.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Nippon Steel, US seek 8-day pause in litigation to resolve deal concerns
By Mike Scarcella and Alexandra Alper WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Nippon Steel and the Trump administration on Thursday asked a U.S. appeals court to extend a pause in their litigation for eight days, to give them more time to reach a deal allowing the Japanese firm to move forward with its $14.9 billion bid for U.S. Steel. The court is likely to approve an extension of the pause, first granted on April 7 when President Donald Trump ordered a second national security review of the proposed tie-up. That pause was set to expire on June 5. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Nippon Steel, US seek 8-day pause in litigation to resolve deal concerns
By Mike Scarcella and Alexandra Alper WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Nippon Steel and the Trump administration on Thursday asked a U.S. appeals court to extend a pause in their litigation for eight days, to give them more time to reach a deal allowing the Japanese firm to move forward with its $14.9 billion bid for U.S. Steel. The court is likely to approve an extension of the pause, first granted on April 7 when President Donald Trump ordered a second national security review of the proposed tie-up. That pause was set to expire on June 5. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Time of India
05-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Apple loses bid to pause app store reform order in Epic Games case
By Mike Scarcella Apple has failed to persuade a U.S. appeals court to pause key parts of a federal judge's order requiring the iPhone maker to immediately open its lucrative App Store to more competition. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday rejected Apple's request to put the provisions on hold as the tech company appeals the judge's order, which came in a long-running antitrust lawsuit brought by "Fortnite" maker Epic Games . U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in April found Apple in contempt of an earlier injunction order she issued in the Epic Games case. Apple in a statement said it was "disappointed with the decision not to stay the district court's order, and we'll continue to argue our case during the appeals process." Epic did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The judge on April 30 ordered Apple to end several practices that she said were designed to circumvent the injunction, including a new 27% fee Apple imposed on app developers when its customers complete an app purchase outside the App Store. The court also prohibited Apple from restricting where developers place links to make purchases outside of an app. In its emergency appeal, Apple said the ruling blocked the company from "exercising control over core aspects of its business operations" and forced it to give free access to its services. Epic Games countered that Apple was trying to continue evading competition and collecting fees that the judge had barred. Apple has faced a "surge of genuine competition" since Gonzalez Rogers issued her April injunction, as developers updated apps with "better payment methods, better deals, and better consumer choice," Epic said. Epic Games sued Apple in 2020 to loosen its control over transactions in applications that use its iOS operating system and how apps are distributed to consumers. Apple mostly won the case, but Gonzalez Rogers in 2021 said Apple must allow developers to more easily steer consumers to potentially cheaper non-Apple payment options. Apple defied that court order to maintain a revenue stream worth billions of dollars, Gonzalez Rogers wrote in April. She also said Apple had misled the court about its efforts to comply with her injunction and referred the company and one of its executives to federal prosecutors for a possible criminal contempt investigation.
