Русская версияA call center in Bremen illegally sold on information from Telekom
databases to third parties, according to a report on the German
public radio station Norddeutsche Rundfunk.
The telecommunications company said it had been the victim of
"extremely criminal machinations." Telekom's databases contain the
personal information of 30 million customers in total.
But the
company said the call center in question, which was working on
behalf of the telecommunications giant, did not have full access to
its data.
Telekom spokesman Philipp Blank told the AP news agency that
database screen shots had been sold on. But he said his company had
no information showing that the data had been used with any
intention to defraud consumers.
Bigger problem than believed
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Information is suspected to have originated from a call center
The scale of the trade in consumer data is clearly much greater
than previously assumed. The German federation of
consumer agencies presented the data of 6 million citizens,
including the bank account details of 4 million of them, that he
had managed to buy for 850 euros ($1,250).
The federation chairman, Gerd Billen, said it had not been a "big
deal" to get hold of the data over the Internet. They mainly came
from a lottery company, but also from mobile phone contracts and
charitable organizations.
The federation urged people to be more careful with their personal
details.
Tip of the iceberg
Last week, the consumer agency in Schleswig-Holstein was sent
a CD-ROM with 17,000 people's personal details, including name,
date-of-birth, telephone numbers, addresses and bank account
information. In some cases, money had been withdrawn from their
accounts without their permission.
The man who passed on the information claimed on Monday that this
represents just a fraction of the data in his possession.
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The information included consumers' telephone and bank account
numbers
"It was only the first chunk of data," Detlef Tiegel told the
German news magazine
Spiegel
. "In fact, I saved the addresses and banking information of 1.5
million clients."
Tiegel told reporters he was given the CD by his boss during a
three-week stint working for a call center in the northern German
city of Luebeck. The public prosecutors' office claims the center
obtained the data illegally for business purposes.
The data protection commissioner for North Rhine-Westphalia Bettina
Sokol has called for a general ban on the trade in personal data,
which she said had spiraled out of control.
"It is necessary to have a general ban for the trade in personal
information such as name, address, date-of-birth or profession.
This should only be passed on for commercial purposes if a consumer
has expressly given his or her permission," she said.
German data protection commissioner Peter Schaar also said that
companies should not be allowed to hide clauses permitting the sale
of such data in the small print.
The trade in data is not a peccadillo," he said.
(Deutsche Welle)
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