In early 2006 Deutsche Telekom’s German mobile phone subsidiary, T-Mobile, lost a disk containing personal information, including name, address, and date of birth, on 17 million of its customers. According to the company, no banking details were lost.

T-Mobile published its version of events on Saturday following a report in German news magazine Der Spiegel that the data were being offered for sale on the Internet. The data loss appears to be confined to customers of Deutsche Telekom’s German subsidiary.