TalkTalk
A monthly contract starts with a credit check, and the check itself becomes a record at the credit agency. The network logs your approximate location with every call, text and data session. Much of the file is kept for years after you leave, tied to the window for bringing a legal claim.
Reported incidents
Fined £400,000 after an attacker took 156,959 customers' details
2016-10-05Affected Legacy Tiscali webpages and the customer database behind them
The Information Commissioner's Office fined TalkTalk £400,000, then its largest fine, over a cyber attack in October 2015. The attacker used SQL injection on three webpages TalkTalk had inherited with Tiscali's UK business in 2009 and reached a customer database. Names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and email addresses of 156,959 customers were accessed, and bank account numbers and sort codes of 15,656. The ICO found the database software had gone unpatched for over three years and that two earlier attacks, in July and September 2015, went unnoticed. TalkTalk paid £320,000 by settling early.
People affected typically ask TalkTalk to confirm whether their information was included, and which categories.
The verified route
DÆTRAX is a personal data accountability ledger: a dated record of which companies hold your personal data, what you asked them to do about it, and what they claimed in reply.