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T-Mobile Data Breach Raises Retail M-Commerce Concerns

Written by Evan Schuman
June 10th, 2009
As retail IT execs start to experiment with—and actually deploy—mobile-commerce applications more, the realization that they have to rely on their new telecom partners to safeguard their experimental data is proving to be unnerving. Recent incidents involving T-Mobile—where the carrier was forced to confirm some claims of a supposed cyberthief who said that he had hacked in and stolen databases, documents and scripts—don't help.


As e-tailers have learned the hard way from E-Commerce, customers don't care about tidy legal contracts assigning responsibility and quality-of-service obligations. If they go to a Wal-Mart or a Home Depot site and they have a bad experience—whether it's with uptime, a FedEx delivery hiccup, incorrect status reports, a video consumer comment that glitches or anything else that the retailer may or may not be directly handling—those customers are going to blame Wal-Mart or Home Depot and might take their business elsewhere. If M-Commerce is on your plate, you need to get used to living by the carrier's standards.

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Posted in CRM, E-Commerce, In-Store, IT Strategy/Industry, Mobile/Wireless/Contactless, Payment Systems, Premium Content, Security/Fraud
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