‘We still don’t know who was hacked’ phone companies admit
By Ian Dunt Follow @IanDunt
Britain's major mobile phone companies still have no full list of which customers' phones were hacked into, they admitted today.
O2's head of fraud, risk and security told MPs on the home affairs committee that the company had handed over call data to the police relating to the phone-hacking scandal and subsequently deleted it, as had Orange and T-Mobile. Vodaphone's head of security suggested some data was still held by the company.
Orange and T-Mobile asked the police for details of which of its customers had been hacked in late 2010 but had still received no response.
"You're still waiting for the list from the Metropolitan police. This is still guesswork," committee chairman Keith Vaz said.
"This is most unsatisfactory, isn’t it? If you still don’t actually know which of your customers have been hacked.
"You can understand the concern of the committee, listening to the answers."
Following a short pause requested by police, O2 informed any customers who might have been hacked of their suspicions.
Orange and T-Mobile's representative came in for considerable criticism, however, for failing to inform potentially affected customers, despite not having been asked to do so by police.
"We didn’t contact our customers, that could prejudice the investigation and we didn’t want to do that," said Orange and T-Mobile legal vice president James Blendis.
Mr Vaz replied: "Isn’t this a complacent attitude? Here you find your customers have been hacked and your company does absolutely nothing."
Mr Blendis responded: "We respond to our obligations to the police. We hand them our records. This is a decision based on practise, common to the industry."
The Metropolitan police recently expanded its investigation into phone-hacking, looking into allegations dating as far back as 2001 and incorporating allegations of computer hacking as well in a side investigation.
