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Comment by doodlebugging | Hacker News Reader

With T-Mobile's history of recurring data breaches one needs to wonder whether they have an internal plan to sell all their user data periodically and then claim that they were pwned by some new vulnerability.

I'm sure I wouldn't touch any service that associated with or shared data with them. Y'all do your own thing though.

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Simple solution for this is to combat it the same for all cellular carriers.

Pre-paid with false information. Cell phone company has a data breach and they data siphon has a number tied to Bob Smith born in 1924.

If I ever do get another phone or switch providers I will seriously consider a cash purchase under an assumed name.

I'm cutting my tech usage now as it is, buying things locally instead of making online purchases, paying by check or cash instead of credit card, leaving my phone home when I go anywhere, editing old posts on forums that I have used, etc. If I continue to use a cell phone when my current phone obsoletes or dies it will definitely be a minimal feature phone for calls and texts only.

I'm a bit tired of all this data hoovering and though it is certainly too late for a lot of things there is never a better time to do something different than right now.

I sometimes wonder what their data collection on me would look like. I get a new starter SIM and number each month. I don't store anything in the SIM.

You get a new phone number every month? This is peak HN lol.

I do! I started because it was $17/mo for 10GB. I pay $23/mo now but I really like calling from a disposable number. I have a 2nd SIM in my phone ($30/yr) for incoming calls + backup carrier.

This seems like an unfair conspiracy theory. It’s more likely that they are just a big target with historically not enough defense.

I think their history of breaches indicates that they are slow to learn from thier mistakes made in securing their customer's PII and as a result I am obtaining my cellular service from a competitor.

Though that competitor has also suffered data breaches, moving to another service makes no logical sense to me since it seems that none of them have a deep commitment to data security since the cost of noncompliance is too low. If meaningful penalties were mandated, something that is unlikely to happen in the current anti-consumer, deregulatory environment, then it would make sense to switch to a provider that has a strong commitment. Otherwise you might as well stay with your current provider.

T-Mobile did get hit annually between 2017-2020 making it appear to a casual observer that perhaps they were just selling the data with their low prices serving as a loss leader and making up the difference by selling everything that they could scrape from customer services annually.

It's a cynical take, I know. It keeps me from switching though.

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