T-Mobile is once more being accused of failing to guard sensitive consumer data after an employee at one in every of its retail stores stole nude images from a customer’s phone when she got here to trade in an old device, in line with a lawsuit filed Friday.
The incident is comparable to no less than eight others levied against T-Mobile previously, in line with court records and news reports. The lawsuit comes as wireless corporations and other tech giants face increasing pressure from lawmakers to do more to guard customer data.
The suit, filed in Washington state court, accuses T-Mobile of failing to properly train its retail staff and “turning a blind eye” when employees use their access to steal customer data under the guise they’re helping them with repairs and data transfers.
“For nearly a decade, T-Mobile customers across america have recurrently reported, evidenced by news stories and lawsuits, instances of retail store employees stealing their intimate videos, explicit photos, and bank accounts,” the suit charges. “Nevertheless, T-Mobile has didn’t implement any commonsense security hardware or software to guard consumers from their data and privacy being exploited during odd transactions on the T-Mobile store.”
In a press release, a T-Mobile spokesperson said: “This was an employee of a third-party authorized retailer, and he was terminated. While we’re unable to comment on the specifics of this pending case, we wish to underscore that we take customer protection and issues like this very seriously. We’ve policies and procedures in place to guard customer information and expect them to be followed.”
The victim, who is simply known as “Jane Doe” within the criticism, states she went to a T-Mobile store on the Columbia Center Mall, about 200 miles southeast of Seattle, last October to upgrade her iPhone XS Max to an iPhone 14 Pro Max. While there, she handed the old device off to an employee so he could transfer her data to the brand new device.
While the employee had the phone, he found nude images of the victim and a video of her having sex together with her partner on the camera roll of the XS Max and sent it to himself on Snapchat, the lawsuit states.
Once the transaction was finished, Jane assumed her data was wiped from the old phone until later that evening, when she checked her Snapchat and saw that the images had been sent to an unknown account, which police later traced back to the T-Mobile employee.
“Anxious and anxious, Jane swiftly returned to the T-Mobile store together with her mother to talk to the shop manager,” the lawsuit states. “During this time, while Jane was searching for assistance on the T-Mobile store, the unauthorized person continued to log into her social media accounts on the iPhone XS Max.”
At first, staff claimed there had been no trade-ins that day, but with help from mall security and native police, Jane’s old phone was present in the back room.
“Somewhat than helping Jane out within the face of the sexual privacy crime, the T-Mobile manager said if Jane wanted access back to the old device that had been weaponized against her, Jane would want to pay them the quantity that that they had discounted her for the trade-in,” the lawsuit states. “Jane’s mother on Jane’s behalf surrendered and paid the quantity.”
The employee was later charged with first degree computer trespass, a felony, and disclosing intimate images, which is against the law in most states, in line with the lawsuit. He pleaded guilty last month, the suit says.
The lawsuit was filed by Carrie Goldberg and Laura Hecht-Felella on the Recent York-based C.A. Goldberg firm and Emma Aubrey from the Washington-based Redmond Law Firm.
Goldberg, who often takes on tech giants for failing to guard consumers, called her latest suit a “classic case of a gargantuan company” chalking off customer injury as a value of doing business.
“T-Mobile has long known that its negligent hiring and absent consumer safety policies will end in no less than a few of its customers becoming sexually exploited,” Goldberg told CNBC.
“T-Mobile has big incentive programs to induce customers to upgrade their devices and switch of their old ones. However the ugly truth is that T-Mobile knows that employees sometimes steal customers’ most intimate images and videos from the old devices they relinquish,” Goldberg added. “This case shows that no one should feel their privacy is secure at T-Mobile.”