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T-Mobile has filed a report to the Information Commissioner’s Office that data on thousands of customers has been sold without the company’s knowledge to unknown third parties. The general consensus is that T-Mobile should be held responsible for the safekeeping of their client information (which is part of their responsibility in their contract with their client).
Though technically, this is not a case of the internal system being weak, it is their employees who are the root of this matter. T-Mobile has expressed that it is currently working on finding out the specific individuals responsible for the data theft.
However, investigating this matter could be very difficult as it appears that this is just the surface of a much deeper problem. The selling and purchasing of information is done on so many levels and there is no easy way to filter through all the persons involved. Often, the data is illegally sold, illegally purchased, and then legally sold to other parties. The constant passing of money on different levels (to paraphrase T-Mobile) could also point to the fact that there is already a working system for these transactions.
While it is commonly spoken of, breach of secure data has never reached a scale this large. At first, T-Mobile had not announced that their company was at the crux of the investigation, but as time wore on, they finally announced that it was their company that currently had investigations (this followed the initial statements from O2, Vodafone, Orange, Virgin and 3 that their companies were not part of the investigation.
For now, government investigators are dismayed at the current penalties for guilty parties and are saying that tougher penalties would serve as a greater deterrent for these illegal activities. These opinions, which are also voiced by Justice Minister Michael Wills currently lack the support and backing of the government.
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