Call centers located in Colombia, Mexico, and Philippines are on AT&T’s watch list due to data breach affecting almost 280,000 US customers. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has entered a $25 million settlement with AT&T Services, Inc. to resolve an investigation into consumer privacy violations at AT&T’s call centers located in the said countries. The fine is FCC’s largest privacy and data security enforcement action to date.
The outcome of the said fine has started to take effect in call center companies. In Mexico, the incident has been investigated by the local authorities’ trough The Federal Institute for Information Access and Data Protection, or IFAI.
AT&T Stress Foam
source: Title="you're a star! by Katy Warner, on Flickr
source: Title="you're a star! by Katy Warner, on Flickr
According to reports, a Mexican media said the theft in Mexico was carried out by three employees of Teleperformance, a provider of call center services to AT&T, IFAI said in a statement.
The Mexico City-based IFAI said it decided to launch a preliminary investigation due to potential non-compliance with Mexico's Federal Law on Protection of Personal Data.
The Philippine local authorities have not started any formal investigation of the issue. The country has enacted The Data Privacy Act or Republic Act 10173 last 2012 but the president has yet to make a National Privacy Commission that would regulate the data privacy policies under the law.
As a result of the fine we have heard reports that some AT&T accounts have been pulled out from different call center companies leaving hundreds of agents in floating status. Some call center employees also stated they still have AT&T account with their company however they are also concerned of losing a job once AT&T’s contract has ended with their respective center.
Colombia may have the same fate of losing AT&T account because an AT&T spokesperson has wrote to Ars Technica with the following message “Protecting customer privacy is critical to us. We hold ourselves and our vendors to a high standard. Unfortunately, a few of our vendors did not meet that standard and we are terminating vendor sites as appropriate. We've changed our policies and strengthened our operations. And we have, or are, reaching out to affected customers to provide additional information.”
So the next time someone approached you if you are working for an AT&T account and being offered to look for customer information for a small fee; please think of honest call center employees who’s working real hard just to make ends meet. Also, your company might follow the strict rule of implementing the "no cellphone rule on the floor policy" and monitoring your computer activities because of this incident.
To protect the call center industry the Philippine government should start implementing the National Privacy Commission, I think BPAP should also start implementing rules and guidelines as well if they don't have anything in place.
Has AT&T account been pulled in your center? Let us discuss via the comments section below.
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Sources : Laprensasa and Ars Technica