Sounds like someone purchased, or otherwise gained access to, T-Mobile’s targeted customer advertising and marketing profile data.
Or, the kind of information that data harvesting applications gather, and then sell to data brokers.
I wonder if they have a grudge against T-Mobile, this is an early stage of a larger plan, or if it’s just for the lulz?
And yet, there are no attempts to defraud the customer. No wording that asks for a ransom/payment, not even an email address that could possibly go to the bad actor. In fact, the email address in the letter is a real email address for T-Mobile’s legal department.
Hopefully it’s just for good old fashioned shits and giggles.
I wonder if someone is trying to cast shade on TMobile as an ISP who is monitoring content and violating consumer rights? Unless it’s a precursor to a follow-up extortion campaign for these customers, it seems like by itself it does more potential damage to TMobile then to the consumers.
About my browsing history: this was for a novel I am writing about terrible terrible people who should never do that
Ah, you’re going for the Pete Townshend defence…
Its scary some entity got the data. But its also kinda funny.
If you’re curious for the price of data: source
Basic Consumer Data Lists: £40 to £120 per 1,000 records.
Verified Consumer Data Lists: £120 to £240 per 1,000 records.
Highly Targeted Consumer Lists: £240 to £400+ per 1,000 records.
It’s about that order of magnitude.
What data?
T-mobile customer names and addresses…maybe even more, who knows
This info isn’t difficult to get.
It sure isn’t legally public available either.
It’s available for, legally (unless they’re a Senator or House Representative), for anybody with money.
There are no privacy laws in the US, there’s no law that they can violate by selling data about you and since that data is worth money then it gets sold openly.
The names and addresses of people using T-Mobile? I’ve not dug into it, but there are definitely databases out there with phone number => provider, and plenty of databases with phone number => name and address. I assume there are multiple out there than combine them.
Are those lists complete? Absolutely not. But complete enough to send out a bunch of fake warnings to some randos.
