T-Mobile Surprise Porn Not An Isolated Incident

After we posted yesterday about a T-Mobile customer being greeted by pictures of topless women when he logged into his account to pay his bill, some of you asked, “What’s the problem?” Several readers’ stories answer that question. (Censored but not exactly tasteful pictures inside.) UPDATE: T-Mobile response inside.

It could get you in trouble at work:

I have a company supplied T-Mobile blackberry. Very unfortunately, when my phone wasn’t working, one of the women in our IT department went to my T-Mobile account page to correct the issue and found a very graphic and clear picture of a woman’s breasts. It created a terrible situation. No one – and I mean NO ONE – would believe me when I told them that I did not take the photo, nor did I put it there. I finally had to just drop it because the more I insisted that it wasn’t mine, the more guilty I sounded. The problem here is that I am the head of the Human Resources Department. I wish it had turned out to be a funny situation, but it didn’t take that path. For many other people, this could be humorous. In my situation, it wasn’t.

It could arouse spousal suspicion:

I stumbled across this article this morning, and the same thing happened to me!!!!!!! I was actually sitting at the computer with my wife, looking at my bill and trying to add ring-back tones, and all of a sudden, there was a picture of some girls butt with a caption reading “kiss this”. WTF!!?!?? She FLIPPED! To this day, she STILL talks about it! I can understand how she would accuse me of this, but I KNOW for a FACT this picture was never, ever on my phone!!!!!!! How does this happen?!?!

Or you could see something a little more graphic than what our original reader saw:

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am contacting you regarding the highly offensive pictures that have appeared on myTMobile home page. Please see the attached screenshots from last night. As of now, those photos still appear on my homepage whenever I access my account.

I have attempted to resolve this matter via the proper channels, ending in a conversation with TMobile tier-2 technical support. The answers I have received so far are unsatisfactory, and to be frank, somewhat condescending.

I was first told that I had somehow unknowingly uploaded these photos myself, or that I had left my phone unattended and a nefarious person of mystery had uploaded them via my handset without my knowledge. I use an unlocked handset that is not sold by TMobile, and thus do not have the software installed to access TMobile’s proprietary MobileLife service. Additionally, I have never used the MobileLife service, nor have I accepted the EULA for the service. Therefore, it is impossible that I have uploaded these offensive pictures, or that someone did so using my handset without my knowledge.

Following that, I was told the photos must have been taken by the TMobile customer who first had this number, and were somehow leftover in the MobileLife folder attached to this number. Again, that is impossible- I have had my number since 2004. It was a Nextel number, then SunCom, then became TMobile when SunCom was purchased. It has never been a TMobile number before now.

Next, the technical support rep told me that this had never happened before, and that the user who took these pictures must have simply transposed digits of intended recipient’s phone number. I pointed the rep to http://consumerist.com/5395978/reader-paid-my-t+mobile-bill-saw-some-boobs, indicating that this is not a rogue occurrence. She replied that, even after seeing this article, it still was not TMobile’s fault and I should just delete the pictures and move on.

These are the offending pictures (the originals were sent to us as uncensored screencaps of the browser window, but we’ve cropped them and added cats to obscure the naughty bits).

Another reader wrote in:

just got a new iPhone. Unlocked it and then checked my account online. I thought it was just some weird fluke thing because they couldn’t even put a picture up of my phone. Where did the pictures come from? I have no idea. I don’t even what “MobileLife” is. My images were both wrong and Oh My God!

The reader who sent this one in said, “I’ve never uploaded photos to tmobile’s website, this picture isn’t
from my phone.”

Additionally, after the Huffington Post picked up this story, they received a complaint and a different picture from one of their readers:

The question is, why is it only porn? Why aren’t people seeing pictures of strangers birthday parties and goofy faces and so forth? And what is Tmobile going to do about fixing the problem? And how are they going to win their affected customers’ trust back?

We’ve reached out to T-Mobile and passed these complaints and pictures on to them, and they’ve promised that they’ll have a statement ready for us soon. UPDATE: T-Mobile’s statement:

T-Mobile is aware of reports from a few customers who have seen inappropriate or unwanted pictures in their online “MyAlbum” section within their MyT-Mobile account. We are taking these reports seriously and actively investigating these issues.

Our initial analysis of the reports leads us to believe that pictures were likely sent to some customers’ mobile number by a third party, whether the customers knew the sender or not. If a customer has not had picture messaging enabled on their handset, a picture sent to them may be delivered only to their online MyAlbum account. For this reason, some customers are surprised when they see the picture for the first time in their MyT-Mobile account.

We will continue to investigate the reports but if customers would like to avoid receiving picture messages in the future they can explore using T-Mobile’s Message Blocking features which are accessed through their MyT-Mobile account online.

(Cat pictures: amboo who? and D.P. Rubino)