A 2022 lawsuit against T-Mobile revealed how T-Mobile exposed the data of its customers to hackers. The lawsuit was filed by an investor in the company that goes by the name Jenna Harper. 

As reported by PhoneArena, the lawsuit claimed that T-Mobile has one unified database where its customer data and credentials are organized into. This database then trains AI and machine learning models, which has the tendency to undermine data security. The lawsuit argues that “T-Mobile prioritizes model training and accessibility over data security.” 

Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile’s parent company, has denied the allegations thrown to them in the lawsuit. 

“Plaintiff points to no T-Mobile board minutes discussing any directive or any documents (either internal or external) at all that mention such a directive. Plaintiff’s opposition ignores that fatal flaw and instead asks the court to infer such a directive based on nothing more than (1) two YouTube videos, (2) an irrelevant PowerPoint slide from a DT supervisory board meeting, and (3) the fact that T-Mobile announced a merger with Sprint in 2018. None of those comes close to supporting such an inference.”

The lawsuit also alleges that Deutsche Telekom extended its AI efforts to T-Mobile after acquiring Sprint. The Un-carrier allegedly cut corners just so they can be part of this AI program. Of course, T-Mobile has brushed these as allegations. 

“Plaintiff’s central thesis – that T-Mobile’s board disloyally allowed DT to ‘loot’ T-Mobile’s data, for DT’s own benefit, thus exposing T-Mobile to cyberattacks – is based solely on speculation (piled on speculation), not well-pleaded facts.”

To support its claims against T-Mobile, the complaint brings up the numerous hacks that happened to T-Mobile after it merged with Sprint. Among these is the August 2021 hack that was caused by a single publicly exposed router. This hack affected over 76.6 million current and former customers of T-Mobile. 

We will have to wait for further developments on this lawsuit. 

Source: PhoneArena