Some T-Mobile customers have found themselves scratching their heads after receiving letters shaming them for their browsing histories. The letter, which says it come from the T-Mobile Legal and Emergency Response Team, claims that the user has been accessing “sites promoting or facilitating hacking-related activity, and sites containing adult-oriented content featuring fictional characters presented as underage.”
Such a letter might incite panic, even though it notes that the account related to the letter won’t be canceled, throttled, or punished in any way. Many are already concerned about how much their wireless carrier might be spying on them, something that only seems to grow each year as carriers like T-Mobile continue to add features we have to opt-out of to keep them from gathering data about us.
Luckily, this specific incident isn’t one worth worrying about, as T-Mobile has confirmed to Android Police that it isn’t sending out these letters. Additionally, the letters mention that the only way to discuss the matter further is to contact the company’s “Compliance Support Team.” The letter, which has been shared to Reddit, also lists what many online users might immediately recognize as a very suspicious email address, but for those who don’t spend as much time connected to their devices, it might not be so easy to spot.
T-Mobile says it isn’t tracking your browsing history
While it’s unclear what the motive behind this particular letter is, the goal seems to be getting users to respond to the scam via email, where they’ll likely be fed other bogus information which the scammers could use to try to gain access to information like the caller’s T-Mobile account login information. T-Mobile says that it is investigating the issue itself, too, and that “its Care team is following up with customers who reached out.”
The good news is that the company also says that it isn’t monitoring your browsing history, and that any blocking of websites is done as a way to keep users safe from known malicious sites for “security purposes.” Nevertheless, the contents of the letter are still somewhat believable, especially with so many changes hitting the internet lately. More age-restriction laws are going into effect, with sites and apps introducing their own systems to comply. Many states are blocking access to specific sites that refuse to obey those laws. With AI taking more of a center stage in our lives, it feels like the importance of personal online privacy is beginning to fade.
