Random noise, incoherent thoughts, whatever.
The scorecard so far:
Paris Hilton cracks: 2
Fred Durst cracks: 1
T-Mobile customers lost: ???
I wouldn’t choose T-Mobile as my cellphone provider, if I was a celebrity.
Incidentally I did switch from T-Mobile over their handling of the big cracking incident late last year. They had known the cracker had access to their customer information for months, yet failed to plug the hole and notify impacted customers, except Paris Hilton, who apparently was important enough.
-TPP
Apparently a cracker gained full access to the entire T-Mobile customer database sometime in 2003. The feds got a wind of the breach by March 2004, because the crackpot was selling confidential Secret Service documents online. T-Mobile was made aware of it by the feds in July 2004, although it is possible they also knew of the breach earlier.
What did T-Mobile do to protect the identity and confidential information of its customers? Nothing. Not a single warning was sent to customers, they did not force customers to change their passwords, they simply wished customers didn’t notice. This, btw, is illegal (civil) in California provided a law enforcement agency did not ask the company to postpone notifying the customers.
As a T-Mobile customer I’m amazed by the irresponsibility of T-Mobile. Thankfully my one-year contract with them is already expired and I’m free to switch to any provider I choose.
1/13/05 Edit: T-Mobile claims cracker only had access to 400 customers and all those customers were notified as soon as T-Mobile found out about the breach. I wonder, if T-Mobile knew at 2003, why the cracker still had access to a Secret Service agent’s account in March 2004.
-TPP
