Selling customer information leads to prosecution

Perhaps Mr. Graham of the Information Commission was reading my post yesterday. The BBC has reported that an individual attempted to sell customer mobile cellular account information. A broker got the information from an employee of a mobile service provider and then sold it to other mobile service providers.

Mr Graham, the Information Commissioner appointed earlier this year, said the case he was now preparing illustrated why there needed to be a prison sentence to prevent people from selling private data to third parties.

It hasn't been determined how many customer account records were sold. The only way anyone found out was suspicion by the originator mobile company tipped the Information Commission in the first place. This in turn raises questions on how data is protected in the first place. Clearly some safeguards are in place for the investigation to take place and will enable the provider to tighten security measures in the future.