Mob mentality
T-Mobile UK has been forced to concede that several employees at the firm had been illegally selling millions of customer records to rival phone companies, after the UK's information commissioner, Christopher Graham, told the BBC that employees of a mobile phone company had been selling-on customer information.
Graham said that the case was not just a serious breach of data privacy, but possibly also the largest of its kind, with millions of people's records being passed on to other firms in exchange for cold, hard, cash.
T-Mobile customers' personal data, including their contract expiry dates, were apparently sold on to competing mobile firms who then used the information to cold-call those customers and offer them new deals just as their old contract was about to expire.
Graham had initially refused to name the firm involved, owing to the ongoing investigation, but after all other UK mobile operators threw up their hands in "not guilty" fashion, T-Mobile was forced to admit it was the firm involved.
Here's a statement from T-Mobile:
T-Mobile takes the protection of customer information seriously. When it became apparent that contract renewal information was being passed on by an employee to third parties without our knowledge, we alerted the Information Commissioner's Office. Working together, we identified the source of the breach which led to the ICO conducting an extensive investigation which we believe will lead to a prosecution.
While it is deeply regrettable that customer information has been misappropriated in this way, it should be noted that no personal financial or security-related information was contained in the records. We continue to support the ICO to help stamp out what is a problem for the whole industry.
We had been asked before today to keep all information on this case strictly confidential so as to avoid prejudice to the investigation and prosecution. We were therefore surprised at the way in which these statements were made to the BBC today.
