Did T-Mobile data of TU Delft employees also go to Statistics Netherlands?

Did T-Mobile data of TU Delft employees also go to Statistics Netherlands?

Statistics Netherlands (CBS) may have had unlawful access to the location data of T-Mobile customers. 2500 TU employees have a work mobile with a T-Mobile contract. Should they be concerned?

Currently, that is not clear. The Dutch newspaper NRC revealed the news on 10 March. The Dutch Personal Data Authority (AP) is now investigating the matter. What is certain is that CBS had access to location data of T-Mobile customers, and according to NRC, these contained sensitive personal data. Whether the latter is really the case, which T-Mobile and CBS dispute, will have to be proven by the AP investigation.

A TU Delft spokesperson says she understands if employees with company mobile phones are concerned about the news. “We will be following this issue closely”, she said. She expresses her expectation that T-Mobile will inform TU Delft if it turns out that personal data of TU employees was also shared with CBS.

That should not be the case, because since November 2018 TU Delft and T-Mobile have a processor agreement, which states that ‘personal data will not be processed further by T-Mobile without prior notification to the customer’.

The latter was not done for any of T-Mobile’s customers, NRC reports. The TU spokesperson says that she will await the AP investigation, ‘especially since the article states that it is not yet clear whether it concerns personal data’.