Germany’s Deutsche Telekom’s mobile phone subsidiary T-Mobile announced on Saturday that they lost personal information of about 17 million customers when they lost a disk containing the information back in 2006.

After a report in a German News magazine Der Spiegel that the personal data was being offered for sale on the internet, T-Mobile came clean on Saturday and gave its versions of events, T-Mobile stated that when they discovered the disk had gone missing they notified the state prosecutor and they began watching the sites and internet forums that you would normally find stolen data for sale, they have stressed that no banking details were lost, but the data included customers, date of births, names, mobile numbers and addresses.

According to the report in Der Spiegel some of the addresses include German government ministers, billionaires, celebrities and business leaders. However T-Mobile has said there has been no evidence of the data being used to steal the identity or harass any of its customers. If you are worried about the disclosure of your mobile phone number, T-Mobile has said you can have it changed for free.

Source: pcworld