If there arent enough people to sign up, the settlement wont be large enough for the law firm to bother pursuing a small settlement. If enough people only signed up for these if the firm was willing to seek actual punitive damages, theyd have to do that if they wanted the case at all.
If the firm is only going to get 100 people to sign on, ATT wouldnt agree to a $177m settlement in the first place. "So a mass movement to force a fundamental shift in this system? that'll never happen" - Im trying to point out that we're the ones enabling the system to fail us as consumers, and we collectively have the power to force law firms to seek higher settlements (or actually try to win cases), which would deter companies from cutting so many corners when it comes to our private data.
AFAIK there is no way to enable previews. I believe it was originally designed that way for security reasons. I ended up changing my whole multi-user profile setup after I realized this.