[396] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Official T-Mobile Policy: Tough Luck If You Lose
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Thu Nov 6 15:16:42 2008
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Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:51:49 -0800
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Official T-Mobile Policy: Tough Luck If You Lose Messages
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000459.html
Greetings. In "Readers Blow Their Stacks Over Voicemail Prompts"
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000449.html )
and "Beware: T-Mobile's Voicemail Paging Trap"
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000448.html )
I recently discussed the serious risks of T-Mobile's voicemail
system offering callers numeric paging even when the called party
has numeric paging notification disabled (apparently the default
setting).
The risks are obvious. Telling callers that they can leave a
numeric page instead of a voicemail message, and then effectively
throwing that page into the trash when the called party has paging
notification off (and has no interest in returning a call to random
paging call back numbers in any case), creates a terrible
situation. You can easily end up with callers who believe that they
are going to get a call back -- but never will. In critical
situations, human nature being what it is, this could be disastrous.
The blog items noted above discuss this scenario in more detail.
I found it difficult to believe that official T-Mobile policy could
possibly amount to the "tough luck" response that people seemed to
be getting.
Unfortunately, it appears that T-Mobile is indeed giving their
subscribers the "one-finger salute" on this matter.
I've now taken this issue up through T-Mobile Tier 2 support, media
relations, and a few minutes ago with T-Mobile U.S. "Executive
Resolutions" (Office of the President). I might as well have been
talking to parrots. No, wait, that's not fair to parrots. You get
more responsive statements when talking to those intelligent birds.
T-Mobile appears to be utterly and completely clueless about the
risks associated with their current voicemail configuration, and
totally unwilling to be educated on the matter. In all cases, I
ended up receiving what sounded like the same prepared script
informing me that "since all T-Mobile subscribers had the ability to
enable numeric paging, all callers must receive the paging option."
I attempted to explain the obvious and potentially serious risks of
accepting numeric pages, and even saying that they were sent, when
the called party hadn't enabled paging notification and wouldn't
return pages -- meaning that those pages were just being sucked into
a black hole.
No luck. I might as well have been talking to machines -- the same
unresponsive pap was just repeated to me again and again.
While I couldn't get any T-Mobile representative to admit it, it's
clear that their policy in this regard amounts to a total lack of
concern regarding whether or not T-Mobile subscribers can rely upon
receiving even important messages.
I'm still not entirely sure whether I've penetrated deep enough
within the T-Mobile corporate structure to reach someone competent
to comprehend the risks involved in their current configuration.
Perhaps there's someone in Germany (from where T-Mobile is
ultimately controlled) who can understand the simple concepts
involved.
In the meantime, I'll begin investigating the possible escalation of
this matter to U.S. state and federal regulatory authorities.
Lost messages can be merely an inconvenience, or they can be a
disaster affecting life and property. Technical problems will occur
from time to time and can often be excused. But bad policies that
create unnecessary risks, combined with an unwillingness to correct
such policies, is an inexcusable situation.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com or lauren@pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
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