Have you ever felt that the mobile phone service carrier you use might be the source of your personal data being exposed one day? That is exactly what happened to millions of German customers of T-Mobile, some of whom were very prominent.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the company T-Mobile lost a disk that contained the personal information of 17 million customers, in Germany. The lost disk was reported to the state prosecutor, but other than that, they were silent about the matter. The data was actually lost back in 2006, however, the company found no evidence of the data being misused at that time. This changed in October 2008, when the data was tracked down on the internet and being sold on the market.

The data that is included on the lost disk contained names, birth dates, addresses, cell phone numbers and some email addresses. According to a report on the incident, this data includes the unlisted information of some German celebrities, business leaders, billionaires, politicians and other important individuals. What criminal wouldn’t want to buy that kind of information on the internet?

Since the loss of the disk, they have implemented using better passwords and access controls to improve the security of the data. Unfortunately, 17 million people are already at risk and it is not known how many of them will be victims as a result of this lost disk. Those included in this list are worried about their phone number being exposed and can contact T-Mobile to have their phone number changed, at no charge.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Data Breach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.