Slashdot Mirror
T-Mobile UK Employees Sold Customers' Information
angry tapir writes "Workers at T-Mobile UK have been selling customer data to brokers who worked for the competition, according to T-Mobile and the UK's Information Commissioner's Office. Criminal charges are being prepared. 'Many thousands' of customers' account details, millions of records, were sold to several brokers for substantial amounts of money, the ICO said. In an announcement (PDF) from the ICO, the agency does not name the operator involved, but T-Mobile acknowledged that it had alerted ICO about the data breach. The BBC reports that after the other mobile operators said they were not the subject of the investigation, T-Mobile confirmed its involvement."
High street retailer is assigned numbers to connect in sequential order in lists hundreds at a time: e.g 07738 400500 to 07738 400900 Joe public walks in and buys a handset on contract with a new number 12/18 months later gets a call from a company to sell him a new deal. Asks why? All that company has done is sent someone into said high street retailer, asked to see the phone numbers list on screen and pick one out That person know that in a 12/18 months time he can plug that number range into his dialer with a high probability that his company will be able to do some business! Leakage of personal data? No. Laughably simple scam? Yes