T-Mobile selling customer details: Enough grounds to end your contract?

Human_Writes

Nikita_st wrote: »

Thank you for your constructive help and advice, very useful. I fully understand what you mean on the damages front but the angle i was hoping to go from was the breach of data protection act on principle 1 and 7, principle 7 being "appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss, destruction or damage to personal data"

The next hurdle is how do i get T-mobile to admit my data was one of those sold.

I've made the below general observations:

Principle 1: States that the data should be processsed fairly and lawfully.

There is no indication that T-Mobile's processing of the data was necessarily unlawful or unfair prior to the point it was stolen from them.

Principle 7: "appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss, destruction or damage to personal data"

Again I think you'd need further information; the act requires that "appropriate technical and organisational measures" be taken to prevent unauthorised processing, however, it doesn't specify what appropriate is or what sort of measures T-Mobile should take.

In addition you've got no idea what measures were taken by T-Mobile to secure access to the data they hold; appropriate in my view does not mean that they have to guarentee that a breach will never occur, it means that they have to take reasonable steps to prevent a breach.

The other problem you've got is that the available information surrounding how this theft of data occurred is minimal and confined to general statements made to the press, until you know how the data was stolen from T-Mobile and what the circumstances were you can't make an educated assessment as to whether or not they've acted appropriatley.

T-Mobile themselves have reportedly been ordered by the ICO not to disclose information about this matter to avoid prejudicing the prosecution of their former employee, in this instance getting them to give out any specific info at all about the breach will be very difficult.

In terms of finding out whether you were affected by the breach your best bet is to write to T-Mobile and ask, also make enquiries of the companies who are calling you and ask them how they obtained your personal data and from whom?

At the moment you need a lot more info before you can think about even asking T-Mobile for compensation or you can really even decide whether they have a case to answer.