T-Mobile begins fight against data thieves Monday
John Legere, the president and CEO of T-Mobile, has vowed to go after hackers that he says are stealing thousands of gigabytes of data.
In a note that included four exclamation points and was published on T-mobile’s website Sunday, Legere said that about one hundredth of a percent of its 59 million customers are stealing data. That works out to about 5,900 users, although he claims it’s only targeting about 3,000 users.
“I’m not sure what they are doing with it,” Legere wroe. “Stealing wireless access for the entire business, powering a small cloud service, providing broadband to a small city, mining for bitcoin – but I really don’t care!”
T-Mobile provides a limited amount of tethering for free to its customers, so that they can use their mobile phones as hotspots to get Internet on their computers and tablets. Once they use up their free tethering, they are supposed to pay more if they want it to continue to tether at high speeds. But Legere said that some “hackers” are downloading apps and writing code that masks how much they are really using. Some of them, he claimed in bold lettering “are using as much as 2 terabytes (2,000GB!) of data in a month.”
T-mobile was just lauded last week by Yahoo tech columnist David Pogue for the many ways it has prodded other wireless phone carriers to offer better plans to its consumers. Pogue’s list of T-Mobile’s innovation includes offering service to customers without locking them in to a two-year contract.
Pogue’s list of T-Mobile customer innovations
March 2013: T-Mobile eliminates contracts
July 2013: You don’t have to wait 2 years to upgrade your T-mobile phone
October 2013: T-Mobile eliminates international roaming fees
October 2013: 200MB a month of free tablet cellular data for life
January 2014: T-Mobile pays your early termination fees
April 2014: T-Mobile ends overage rates when you exceed your allotted data
June 2014: Free 7-day loaner iPhone to try out T-Mobile service
June 2014: Unlimited free music streaming without using any of your T-Mobile data
September 2014: Free Wi-Fi calling from T-Mobile smartphones
January 2015: T-Mobile lets you roll over unused data
June 2015: T-Mobile lease program offers phone upgrades 3 times a year
July 2015: T-Mobile lets you call Mexico and Canada for free – with no data roaming charges in those countries
This story was originally published August 31, 2015 at 8:51 AM with the headline "T-Mobile begins fight against data thieves Monday."