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Update April 12th: T-Mobile statement.
T-Mobile has a questionable history when it comes to personal account information being leaked. Whether it’s an app bug sharing children’s location data or a data breach, T-Mobile is no stranger to accidental info leaks.
The latest example of this appears to be a new bug where customers receive errant emails that don’t apply to their accounts. It’s definitely on the lower end of things to worry about, but it’s still an issue.
Multiple reports are coming in from customers that are receiving random trade-in confirmation emails from T-Mobile. The emails are legitimate, and come from T-Mobile’s standard donotreply email address.
As seen below, and over on Reddit, a seemingly random device along with its IMEI are displayed in the email.
Some customers report receiving just one of these notifications, while others report seeing up to four separate emails all with different device details.
What’s Happening?
So far, it appears to be a glitch with T-Mobile systems. They’re legitimate emails, they’re appearing for multiple users all at once, and customers that receive them report no actual changes on their accounts.
This suggests that the issue is on T-Mobile’s end, specifically their notifications. When a trade-in is received, typically, that customer is informed via this system. However, some kind of glitch may be assigning these notifications to the wrong email addresses.
This isn’t great, as an IMEI is technically information that should stay secure and not shared with others.
Luckily, so far, it appears no other personally identifiable information has been leaked.
What to do
In our opinion, there’s nothing really to worry about from this issue. Other than the general fact that T-Mobile shouldn’t be having glitches like this with people’s information, it doesn’t appear to actually be an account issue that needs fixing.
We’ve reached out to T-Mobile about this issue and they’ve responded with the following statement:
We are aware that a small number of customers recently received a mistaken trade-in notification from T-Mobile. Customers who received the notification and are unsure can check their account in the T-Life app or online, or contact Customer Care. It’s completely safe to ignore the notification. We apologize for the inconvenience.
– T-Mobile
As expected, it’s safe to ignore these emails. If you’d like, you can proactively do a lookover of your T-Mobile account, either in the T-Life app or online. If nothing looks out of place, you’re good.
