A potential contract escape due to the data loss

Having read about the data breach, I noted with interest a comment on TheRegister's forums, which raises a good point:
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2015/11/03/t...

...The question is, why are you still paying your share of Ms Harding's vastly inflated remuneration? Terminate your contract with them, citing the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982, and their failure to deliver the service with reasonable care and skill, offering as prima facie evidence the details of the call you had, and the fact that IT data breaches have been going on since at least 2007 but are readily avoided by the application of reasonable care and skill
[...]

They can't dispute your claim using their T&C because statute law trumps the terms of any contract, and then their only grounds for dispute is to claim that a breach of over 1.1m customer records does count as reasonable care and skill, which won't stand up in the small claims court if that's where this goes. Here's a starter for ten:

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/template-...

Looks quite simple to me at least - wonder whether it would actually work! (No doubt in here there's at least a few people who seek to leave after this.. slight debacle!)

Surely the care and skill is to supply broadband and/or phone line. That's what customers pay for.

Edited by broadband66 (Fri 06-Nov-15 13:03:29)

Look at the Register bit again - note my emphasis

failure to deliver the service with reasonable care and skill

ie to secure the required customers' data

From The Register (citing a Citizens Advice Bureau template):

Terminate your contract with them, quoting the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982

From The Daily Mail (citing John Deane of solicitors Slater and Gordon):

'TalkTalk has failed to honour its contractual promises to its customers' .. use the Consumer Rights Act 2015

From Martin Lewis, MoneySavingExpert (citing Mike Dailly of Govan Law Centre):

argue against the [early exit] fee under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999

Since the lawyers can't even agree on which law has been breached (if any) -- it's far from a cut-and-shut case.

--

Meanwhile, the latest news from TalkTalk is that less than 4% of customer records were compromised; and only partial data was disclosed in those cases.

In reference to help2.talktalk.co.uk/oct22incident:

6th November 2015 � Latest Update
...
We are now able to confirm which customers were affected:

The total number of customers whose personal details were accessed is 156,959;
Of these customers, 15,656 bank account numbers and sort codes were accessed;
The 28,000 obscured credit and debit card numbers that were accessed cannot be used for financial transactions, and were �orphaned�, meaning that customers cannot be identified by the stolen data.

Our ongoing forensic analysis of the site confirms that the scale of the attack was much more limited than initially suspected, and we can confirm that only 4% of TalkTalk customers have any sensitive personal data at risk.

So if you're in the remaining 96% of customers whose accounts remain safe, little hope of wriggling out of contract early.

Not a victim of any data breach? Not a victim of fraud? No hope of 'quantifying losses' for any county court claim.

----

Edited by deleted (Fri 06-Nov-15 22:06:02)

Also impossible to prove any fraud on your account is linked to this breach

I thought this had blown over by now... it seems to me that what happened to TalkTalk had little no detrimental affect on customers anyway...

Details that have been leaked are either useless or probably in the hands of those who find them handy already due to the amount of information such as names, address and phone numbers passed about by companies years ago and still to this day.

The only reason there was a big uproar about it was that TalkTalk was being GOOD to its customers by letting them know ASAP... I can assure you that another company might not have done such a thing until they knew for sure what had happened and how it had happen.

So I suppose folk could switch provider but then whats to say another breach at another providers isn't on the cards or happening as we speak...

Vodafone announced a breach/leak earlier this week too, British Gas said some of its customers details where available to public, but because they took steps to secure and lock down accounts before hand no one freaked.... so maybe the breach happen 4-8 weeks earlier....

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

I thought this had blown over by now... it seems to me that what happened to TalkTalk had little / no detrimental effect on customers anyway...

The churn rate is probably soaring, along with customer dissatisfaction. Despite TalkTalk trying to stem the tide by holding customers to term. And TalkTalk's share price has already tanked. Leaving the telco even more vulnerable to hostile takeover.

That, quite possibly, was the hidden agenda all along. Use the corporate and state media to trash the reputation of an already troubled company. Provoking a customer stampede; giving it a thorough stock-bashing; and loosening it up for an unwelcome acquisitor.

With the Hedge Funds complicit. Pre-positioned and shorting the stock. Ready to profit from the inevitable slide in the share price. As news of the "hack" melodramatically panned-out across the media.

Stockbrokers at the ready, too. Snapping up the tanked stock, on behalf of that hidden acquisitor. Building-up bigger and bigger holdings. As institutional funds running stop-loss algorithms sell-out at pre-programmed trigger points.

And the entire scandal contrived on behalf of a hidden player, maybe? Possibly another telco. Maybe a cellular operator. With Vodafone being mooted. The cellular rival keen to muscle-in on the fixed-wire business. A cost-effective way of acquiring four million fixed-wire customers minus the churn, plus all the plant.

Today's buzzword in the industry is "convergence". Describing a tenuous marketeers' dream. The idea that we only really want one carrier. The same telco providing us with a "quad-play" of services: fixed wire, cellular, internet and entertainment. One carrier gives all? Good for competition? Whadda ya think.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Details that have been leaked are either useless or probably in the hands of those who find them handy already due to the amount of information such as names, address and phone numbers passed about by companies years ago and still to this day.

Exactly. Someone in the FT reckoned our dates of birth are "confidential" information. Not in the least. Not with the full electoral registers floating around on the "dark web". Containing our names, addresses and the dates we become eligible voters (turn 18). Not very "confidential" after all.

Same with the Census data; that too was "transferred" illicitly into the private sector. The head of the Census claimed it was accidental and inadvertent, but resigned nonetheless. At that point, his task complete.

----

The whole TalkTalk scandal is very contrived. The telco publicly vilified for malicious and spurious reasons. Particularly spurious when the acquisition and disclosure of sensitive data by governments and corporations is commonplace.

Contributor SevenLayerMuddle over on the Kitz forum notes the insidious data-acquisition and data-sharing that LinkedIn is engaged in. I noticed that too. LinkedIn regularly proposes connections with people I've only ever emailed; sometimes just once, from a Google email account. Or people I have simply searched for using Google, but never contacted.

Clearly Google is sharing my private search engine results and internet traffic data (the From: and To: headers) from private emails. And sharing that data with LinkedIn, an ostensibly rival social-networking business. God only knows with whom Google is sharing the especially sensitive geolocation data from our Android handsets.

This widespread and routine data-sharing - by corporations like Google and LinkedIn - compared to the much-ado-about-nothing at TalkTalk - largely trivial information on less than 4% of customers - is breathtaking by comparison. Perhaps there's the real scandal? We still haven't noticed the elephant on the sofa?

The only reason there was a big uproar about it was that TalkTalk was being GOOD to its customers by letting them know ASAP... I can assure you that another company might not have done such a thing until they knew for sure what had happened and how it had happen.

The trumped-up scandal has had a sort of stupefying effect on people. Possibly by design. With people now hoodwinked into thinking that corporations normally safeguard our data; rather than routinely sharing it among themselves. Creating what is in effect one giant private intelligence database on us all. Dwarfing anything GCHQ might be gathering.

So I suppose folk could switch provider but then what's to say another breach at another providers isn't on the cards or happening as we speak...

Vodafone announced a breach/leak earlier this week too, British Gas said some of its customers details were available to public, but because they took steps to secure and lock down accounts before hand no one freaked.... so maybe the breach happen 4-8 weeks earlier....

We need to be told about the alleged breach of BT customer records too. Amid the hysteria over TalkTalk, the Mail-on-Sunday (1 Nov), obliquely revealed a data breach at BT, in a very by-the-by manner. Including BT in a list of 14 other companies allegedly hacked; also including O2, EE, Vodafone and Sky.

When did this 'hack' of BT records take place? How many records were stolen? What did they contain? How were they stolen? Which of BT's customers are affected? Is this limited to BT Sport subscribers, as the Mail claims? But if we're BT Broadband customers, aren't we automatically BT Sport subscribers too? Has BT contacted those affected?

Questions which our obsequious media never seems to ask. He who pays the piper calls the tune, maybe?

--

Edited by deleted (Sun 08-Nov-15 06:21:39)

Good grief. Paranoia has infested your brain. If you are so worried then cut up all you credit and debit cards and as PNet advert suggests, move to a forest and whittle some spoons while off-grid.

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Also impossible to prove any fraud on your account is linked to this breach

No help that the tabloids are still running with fact-free scare stories. The Register carries a gem of its own (Nov 5). Baldly claiming that £3,500 supposedly nicked from a man's account was the fault of TalkTalk:

In reference to www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/05/talktalk_offers_customer_30gbp_fin...:

[UFO spotter] Ian Rimmington, based in Ossett, West Yorkshire, told The Register £3,500 had disappeared from his account on Friday, 23 October. This was two days after the telco had been hacked and hours after it claims it had informed banks that punters' personal information had been compromised.

Completely shameless! The Register doesn't even try and verify his theft claim. Just pumps it out as fact. Not a shred of corroboration. Yet pitches itself as an investigative news source; artificially reinforced by that vapid strap-line of "Biting the hand that feeds IT." Seriously?!

Weird outfit is The Register. Badly mimicking Private Eye. None of Eye's humourous schtick. Instead loads of gay innuendo. But like Private Eye, more often it's not what it says, but what it doesn't, which paints the truer picture. Especially in its aerospace tales..

Here though, in covering the TalkTalk saga, The Register exhibits credibility on a par with the Sunday People...

The Sunday People carries a graphic inset in its double-page spread; a 'special' on the TalkTalk 'scandal'. With an intriguing if tiny screen-shot. Showing us how the little eejits do it; even the "code" the pesky hackers use. Zoom in and take a look! CHKDSK, eh?! To pull off an SQL injection attack? Who'd have thunk it?

The copy for the article written around the People's dramatic front page is even more outlandish. Reading like a budget crime-fiction. The alleged hacker identified only as "Martian". He communicates incognito with The People's investigative hack. Writing in the most implausible tone:

"My name is Martian. Been in the fraud scene for some time. I like to keep things professional but I'm a pretty cool and smart guy."

Oh gosh! Seriously?! "I'm a real hacker! You do believe me, don't you?"

As proof he's bonafide, "Martian" offers up what he claims is a "stolen identity". Which the People naturally won't disclose, nor even verify it is stolen. No proof of anything at all then. "Plenty more where that came from, sir", boasts "Martian".

Irregardless, the Mail-on-Sunday and other tabloids lift out the least silly elements from this nonsensical tale. Recycling it for their own comedy columns. Waste not want not!

And that passes for a "special investigation" by the Great British press?!

---

Edited by deleted (Mon 09-Nov-15 03:08:57)

If any Talk Talk users are tempted by the offer of a year's free Noddle credit monitoring I wouldn't bother. I was thinking about it (I have land line calls through Talk Talk) but checked the reviews https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/noddle.co.uk
It seems you're more at risk signing up for that!