Deutsche Telekom Hit By Another Customer Data Privacy Breach

A week after confirming that customer data for 17 million T-Mobile customers had been lost, Deutsche Telekom has been hit by another customer privacy problem after it was revealed that it was easy to access the details of 30 million landline customers.

The company had only just announced procedures to clamp down on loose data protection policies when Der Spiegel revealed the latest breach in preview copies of its weekly magazine due out on Monday.

The newspaper reported that Deutsche Telekom had not patched the new security holes it found until reporters confronted the company for comment. The company said that it has now closed the loophole - which had also included customer bank account details.

The company added that it had no indication that anyone had used the data maliciously, and has set up a Data Privacy Board department to oversee staff access to customer data.

"In the past few months, we have developed a comprehensive set of measures which we will now implement to immediately improve data privacy", said Timotheus Höttges, Board of Management member responsible for Sales and Service, as well as Security. He was speaking before the latest data breach was discovered.

On the web: Der Spiegel

Posted to the site on 12th October 2008