The UK Mobile Phone Blog

T-Mobile employees caught selling personal data

We don’t want to cause alarm, but news stories have today revealed that T-Mobile, the fourth biggest mobile phone network in the UK, is under investigation for selling on millions of records of personal data from thousands of customers. Okay, to make it clear, it’s a handful of rogue staff within the company, not T-Mobile themselves so put down the pitchforks and the torches.

The data sold seems to be related to upgrading customers, whom were cold called regarding their soon to be ending contracts, which is illegal in this country and at current is punishable by way of fines. The breach is said to be the biggest of its kind on record and testimony to the fact that the punishment for such acts should be upgraded to prison sentencing according to Christopher Graham, the watchdog responsible for safeguarding personal information. We completely agree with Mr Graham on that, anyone caught selling personal data should face prison, i mean after all, not only does it go against Data Protection, but we the consumer also have to suffer at the mercy of annoying salesman phoning at all hours of the day, reason enough on it’s own to lock them up and throw away the key.

When asked to comment, T-Mobile had this to say: “T-Mobile takes the protection of customer information seriously. When it became apparent that contract renewal information was being passed on to third parties without our knowledge, we alerted the Information Commissioner’s Office.” And it seems that the general consensus is for stronger punishment across the board for these rogue companies operating in what was described as a “lucrative criminal activity.”