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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."
-1 Stockholm Syndrome.
"But the ETF is so high becomes he loves me..."
At what point do the competitors have to take responsibility for purchasing the data? It seems that they should have known the data wasn't kosher.
The entire UK (Is it any different elsewhere?) Mobile Phone industry works on ethical standard that would shame organised crime, among the many abuses I've come across :
* Deceptive tariffs, resulting in unexpectedly large bills, especially the roaming data ( I used to handle the phone admin for a medium sized company, we had a user come back from overseas trips with bills up over a thousand pounds when the free roaming data the salesman told us we'd bought turned out to have a fair use limit of 10MB...)
* The reverse billing text message scam - some of the companies operating this make tens of millions, and have been fined hundreds of thousands for repeated abuses - they are still in business.
* your bank details get passed on and you are billed for insurance you never asked for
* BUYING the stolen data
Think of these guys as a bit like Chris in the Sopranos, They got impatient and wanted a piece of the action for themselves. They may get a slap on the wrist, but the business is full of worse criminals.
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