An employee of the Czech branch of T-Mobile stole customer data and then tried to sell it to third parties, according to Czech news website iDNES.
The incident came to light on Monday, June 13, last week, and the company issued a statement later that day.
T-Mobile said its security systems detected the employee's actions and reported the incident to police.
The employee managed to steal the data from 1.5 million customers and later tried to sell it to third parties, only to be arrested by authorities.
T-Mobile explains that they have fired the employee and the police are now conducting an investigation into the incident.
The company assured customers that the employee did not get his hands on passwords orpersonal information, all he managed to steal was customer information intended for marketing campaigns. The company says the worst-case scenario is for its customers to receive an increased amount of spam.
Additionally, the company adds that the data theft had nothing to do with an incident involving a signal malfunction that occurred on April 19. These two incidents are unrelated, and T-Mobile says a connection between the two does not exist.
“As such, this is a case of individual failure and not a system or procedural failure,” a T-Mobile spokesperson said last week. “Thanks to our robust security mechanisms, we were able to respond promptly and secure the database, which was purely marketing in nature. It does not contain location or traffic data or sensitive data, such as passwords.”
T-Mobile Czech Republic, a member of the Deutsche Telekom, is celebrating its 20th birthday this year and the company is the country's largest mobile provider.
Last year, T-Mobile USA announced that data for 15 million of its customers was compromised. Experian, a third-party vendor that processed the company's credit applications, was hacked and lost a copy of T-Mobile users' data.
