O2, a leading provider of mobiles phones and broadband in the UK, accidentally revealed mobile phone numbers on websites that their customers accessed. This was a rather big flaw and definitely not good for all the customers who surf and browse the web on their phones.
The flaw was found by Lewis Peckover, a web systems administrator during an experiment. He showed that the company was sharing customer’s phone numbers with websites that were displayed as plain text in their header information.
With this happening, website owners could have had the ability to take their phone numbers and then spam them through text messages or telemarketing.
“O2 admitted that the problem began on January 10th and said it was the “unintended effect” of some routine maintenance that the network carried out earlier this month. They said the issue was fixed this afternoon. In a statement, the company said: “We investigated, identified and fixed it this afternoon. We would like to apologise for the concern we have caused.” The company added: “The only information websites had access to is your mobile number, which could not have been linked to any other identifying information we have about customers.”
So, the company knew about the problem, just not the extent of the problem. Or did they and just not worry about fixing it? Either way, the flaw is fixed and customers don’t have to worry about their mobile phone numbers being taken and used to spam them.
Do you think O2 should issue an individual apology to customers?
