T-Mobile UK Employees Sold Customers' Information 65
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."
T-Mobile Customer (Score:4, Interesting)
I like T-Mobile, especially because they have great customer support. I have a friend who got overbilled by a lot, and decided to settle instead of going to court over it. My experience with the company though has been pretty good. I'm staying with them.
Re:T-Mobile Customer (Score:5, Funny)
"But the ETF is so high becomes he loves me..."
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I'm not the only one who likes T-Mobile for their customer support. [cnn.com]
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EVIL and GOOD were
static int EVIL = 1;
and
static int GOOD = 0;
REALLY old guys from the K&R C Days would have done this
#define EVIL 1
#define GOOD 0
You youngin's and you're wipper snapper managed OOP langauges ....
Actually, I like them myself. I'm learning to really like C#. Managed C++, though, is a spawn of Satan.
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Are you a TMobile UK (or US or Germany or wherever else TMobile do business) customer?
I'm a TMobile UK customer (because I wanted the G1), and my personally customer support experiences with them have been pretty terrible. They refused to pause my contract when I came traveling (whereas other UK telecommunications companies will do so), they lowered the price of the contract a week after I bought my G1 and wouldn't let me downgrade to the lower tariff and every time I talk to them, they just seem unwilling
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I have a friend who got overbilled by a lot, and decided to settle instead of going to court over it.
Thats my main problem with mobile network operators they are the biggest money grabbing bastards to walk the planet. The amount of times I have had to go to small clams court for clients because of unfair charges is a joke (all tho T-mobile are best in this respect).
I am jobless at the moment so bills are piling up and I have not paid my broadband (virgin media) for three months, so they cut me off, rang up paid off a month and I was back up with the hour.
With O2 I missed one payment two weeks later I was b
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This is the last time, That I am going on an 18 month contract, Form now on it’s monthly rolling contract and I will pay for the phone out of pocket, It might cost me more in the long run,
I suspect actually it will be the opposite. I started doing this about the time that 18-month contracts became the norm and I've been able to reduce the amount I pay monthly massively (those monthly rolling rates are cheaper than the handset-subsidised rates; plus you have a better window to threaten them with moving to the competition and grab the best bargains as and when the appear). Plus I get a handset that is (a) already unlocked (which I would otherwise have been charged £20 for if I wanted to
Re:T-Mobile Customer (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a T-Mobile Customer. I think they did the right thing, coming forward when it was obvious they had a data breach.
Data breach? That was a few months ago when they lost their entire customer database along with credit card numbers. This time they sold their data.
T-Mobile are the worst phone network going. Their coverage sucks, their customer service sucks, they are willing to abuse their own customers to make a few quid. The only thing going for them is the price.
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ROTFL!
However, they were about the first UK operator to offer a flat-rate Internet deal which only cost a hand and a foot.
T-Mobile Operator (Score:2)
Sold to competitors (Score:5, Insightful)
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They'll have taken the standard approach of asking the brokers to verify that all the data had been collected legally (for example, by people ticking or forgetting to tick the tiny box in the middle of all the small print at the bottom of a form they filled out), the brokers would have lied - or already been "lied" to by the T-Mobile staff and everyone would have carried on as before.
I very much doubt that the ICO can or will do much to sanction the other providers.
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IMHO as soon as they used the data, rather than reporting the "brokers" to the appropriate authorities.
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You shouldn't have bought the answers to an exam in the first place.
No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
The likelihood of valuable data being exploited is proportional to it's marketability. The more important the data, the more likely it will be stolen or otherwise exploited. It doesn't matter if it's a company, a utility or a government.
And why shouldn't they? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:And why shouldn't they? (Score:5, Informative)
Well in nations that have a government willing to keep telco's in line, like in Australia.
Waiting for the inevitable extremist right wing mod down for suggesting that regulation can actually help the consumer by making sure businesses adhere to the rules.
OK, things aren't perfect here in Australia, but abuse is kept to a minimum as it only takes one phone call to the TIO (Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman) to sort things out if my telco screws me and if the TIO finds merit in my claim the Telco is ordered to pay for the TIO's investigation as well as any punishment that is handed out.
I'm with Three (Hutchinson) here in Oz and apart from the gratuitous advertising which is free (fair enough, I haven't asked them to stop yet) serivce has been adequate, all fees and charges were made known up front and were also itemised on my bill.
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The entire UK (Is it any different elsewhere?)
Well It's different in Canada, sure things mess up now and then, but every time I've bitched at Telus, they've come through. No doubt mileage varies.
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Bottom line; He took a salesman's word for it, and didn't think to wonder why it was such a sweet deal. Free roaming data? Sure, bud, and Satan's buying mittens.
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This guy should have known better. And good luck proving what a salesman tells you... "Yes, your honour, he said it was unlimited." "And what did the contract say?" "Oh, I don't know, I skipped to the bottom and signed, like I do with EULAs on software. Nobody reads them."
Vote with your feet (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Vote with your feet (Score:4, Informative)
I've cancelled direct debits and my contract. Vote with my feet - if they want to be fool enough to sue me for the loss of the contract then they can expect to get countersued for the cost of credit monitoring. Until people start slapping the companies hard by refusing to do business with them this will carry on the UK data protection *laws* are good, but the *penalties* are worthless as a deterrent.
Whom? T-Mobile?
You must be a hit at restaurants. When the waiter gets your order wrong, I'm betting you tell everyone there to not eat at that restaurant again.
It seems to me that T-Mobile did the right thing, and contacted the authorities once they figured out what was going on. You want to punish them for that?
Although, you didn't specify anyone. Perhaps you meant the companies that bought information?
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ROFL. You're saying you want the customer's data, which was likely needed by the employee to do their job, to be hidden from them? Good luck with that one, what's next? Not telling waiters your order because you want to protect your personal data?
Seriously though, you have absolutely no evidence that the data was mishandled by T-Mobile, just by an employee who they are going after now. Would you blame T-Mobile if a hacker got in and stole their data? How about if it was subpoenad by the government and then
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/me gives a hand. Stop rolling and stand up.
If it were convenient and profitable for users to sue providers for provable instances of data breach, do you think they would act differently?
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It seems to me that T-Mobile did the right thing, and contacted the authorities once they figured out what was going on. You want to punish them for that?
That's flawed reasoning. They should be pushed for abusing their customers and breaking the law, saying sorry later doesn't cancel out their deliberate actions.
They should be punished. (Score:2)
How is it possible for anybody to have access to all that information?
Only processes should be able to access records of people in volume, no manual query should be able to gather that information.
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patterns (Score:2, Informative)
Detect abuse (rising to the level of unauthorized access) of access privileges to access a handful of records? Very hard.
Detect abuse of access privileges that constitute unauthorized access to "millions of records"? Very easy. It's all about automatically flagging abnormal or unusual patterns of accesses so that they can be audited to determine if they were authorized (highly unlikely at that volume difference) or unauthorized.
But first the data/system owner has to care about unauthorized access. The Do
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The number of employees who actually have a legitimate need to access huge numbers of records/substantial portions of the database is very small. Appropriate access controls are implied by the relevent legislation.
Who is paid to access thousands of records? (Score:2)
Sorry, but I fail to see why anybody should have access to a substantial amount of records at the same time.
This smacks to me as lack of security.
Re:Vote with your feet (Score:4, Funny)
Contact the ICO and find out if your data was included in the sold information.
Then sue T-Mobile for not protecting your personal data.
Then after the court cases, sue the T-Mobile staff who stole the data, the brokers who sold the data, and the other network operators who bought the data.
T-Mobile customers could if they play this right make a tidy sum of money from sueing the people involved. Remember to get in early before the other customers and ex-customers clean up.
Of course the real way to handle this is to put a price (say, minimum annual contract price x number of customers) and then use **AA accounting methods and sue those involved for copyright infringement of the data :-)
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I wonder what celebrities do... (Score:1)
This makes me wonder what an individual who would really like their info to remain private can do to keep it so.
Celebrities, politicians, all their info is potentially for sale, and all it takes is one greedy employee with some debt...
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Re:I wonder what celebrities do... (Score:5, Informative)
Interestingly, some of the UK mobile operators have bankers licences and are therefore governed by the FSA (financial services authority). The FSA defines a PEP marker (Politically Exposed Person [wikipedia.org]) on records and these typically have greater sensitivity than the rest and each access is audited. Anyone who thinks they are 'famous' can become a PEP on request - politicians, david beckham's, recognised government officials, company execs are using this device more and more.
Whilst it might seem like a good idea to register yourself as a PEP (e.g. I'm famous on slashdot), it can be a pain in the arse because some banks etc will not send out new credit cards directly to a PEP.
Using alias's is illegal if done incorrectly. Using an alias as a "stage name" is OK for celebs, but not so great for politicians. Also, it's not a great idea to buy a phone contract with an (!deedpoll) alias.
Not exclusive to T Mobile (Score:4, Interesting)
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Can somebody say "Data protection act" ?
Re:Not exclusive to T Mobile (Score:4, Funny)
If you read the article, someone has.
I know, I just come here for the stellar conversations.
Re:Not exclusive to T Mobile (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not exclusive to T Mobile (Score:4, Informative)
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You can easily find the provider for a given number. Here is an example that works in the US.
http://privacylog.blogspot.com/2009/01/security-hole-in-sms-spam-websites.html [blogspot.com]
That website also allows you to charge arbitrary amounts of money to arbitrary phone numbers using SMS spam signup.
Old news? (Score:1)
Yeap, it's not T-Mobile calling me, but whoever it was they sold all my details to (including tarrif and expiry details) back then is STILL using/forwarding/selling it on and on! Every year the company name is different, but
Taking measures (Score:2, Interesting)
Who bought the stolen records? (Score:2)
"Workers at T-Mobile UK have been selling customer data to brokers who worked for the competition [...] The BBC reports that after the other mobile operators said they were not the subject of the investigation, T-Mobile confirmed its involvement."
So.. who actually bought the stolen records if T-mobile employees sold them to other operators but no other operators were involved?
Re:Who bought the stolen records? (Score:4, Informative)
So.. who actually bought the stolen records if T-mobile employees sold them to other operators but no other operators were involved?
Ans: Third party phone retailers (or, at least, their employees). Not the sort that sell SIM-free phones, the sort that act as agents for the networks and mostly sell phones on contract.
At least, that's who I was getting cold-called by when my T-Mobile contract ran out. Of course, they did their best to use weasel words to imply that they were calling from T-Mobile without actually saying so.
I assume that the game was to try and get you to sign a new T-Mobile contract with them as agent, so they would get the commission.
It's not just TMobile. (Score:3, Insightful)
good (Score:2)
Oh goody, my contract is up and it's another reason to want to move elsewhere.
I'm optimistic of being on a really good deal soon. With T-Mobile.
(I'm not even vaguely surprised at this kind of thing any more from any company, their being caught merely represents an opportunity for me to make use of it).