T-Mobile: Statement regarding the data leak
15.06.2016Company: T-Mobile Czech Republic a.s.
We would like to provide more specific information regarding the attempted theft and sale of T-Mobile customer marketing data, which was published by the daily MF Dnes.
We regret to confirm that one of our employees attempted to steal and subsequently sell customer data. That person was a member of a small team that normally worked with customer data. Immediately upon becoming suspicious that a crime had been committed, we took all the necessary steps in cooperation with the Police of the Czech Republic. The alleged perpetrator’s employment relationship with the company was terminated immediately and the police initiated an investigation. Due to the pending investigation, we are unfortunately unable to provide any additional specific information.
Therefore, this is a case of a failure of an individual and not a system or procedural failure. Thanks to our robust security mechanisms, we were able to respond immediately and secure the database, which had a purely marketing nature; it did not contain any location or traffic data or sensitive data such as passwords. The only risk to which our customers could theoretically be exposed is that they might potentially be approached with unsolicited marketing offers.
We would also like to rebut speculation that the data leak was connected with the signal failure on 19 April. These two incidents are completely unrelated; from a technological perspective, such connection is absolutely excluded.
“I would like to reassure our customers that there was no actual data leak and that their data are safe,” says Milan Vašina, T-Mobile´s Managing Director, adding: “The trust and security of our customers are of key priority for us. Although we found no system failure during a thorough check, we will check the whole system again and consider the introduction of other precautionary measures if necessary.”
We will keep you informed about subsequent developments.
