Trump Mobile exposed customers' personal data

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/22/trump-mobile-confirms-it-exposed-customers-personal-data-including-phone-numbers-and-home-addresses/

by rippeltippel • 2 months ago

260 91 2 months ago

techcrunch.com

mkw5053• 2 months ago

I would not have believed you if you had told me they had the engineering and operations talent to prevent personal data leaks, among many other things.

Finnucane• 2 months ago

I would not have believed that they had 'engineering' or 'operations'.

Uncle_Brumpus• 2 months ago

"Hello, Aliexpress seller? Can you paint them gold?"

Is about how I expect it all went.

kookster310• 2 months ago

"Walker said Trump Mobile is evaluating whether it needs to notify customers of the exposure of their personal data."

It was confirmed home/payment addresses were leaked, how is that not worthy of notification?

delecti• 2 months ago

Because who's going to make them?

Clent• 2 months ago

There are regulatory rules on when disclosure must occur. They're saying they're not going to bother if it's not required.

lapetitejort• 2 months ago

Even if they are required, who will hold them accountable? The FCC?

soraminazuki• 2 months ago

There are still rules in America? I thought the new law of the land was ...checks notes... governance by "strength, force, and power."

866-RON-0-FEZ2• 2 months ago

There was a time when telcos would print this information in a big book and deliver it to your porch for free.

giancarlostoro• 2 months ago

Hell, in some states you can find these details rather quickly since there's so much that is considered public record.

gowld2• 2 months ago

relevant username.

Not quite true, though, because that book charged money in exchange for privacy.

olyjohn• 2 months ago

Except all you had to do was tell them you want to be unlisted, and BAM even the operator could not find your number. This is nothing like what is happening today, and I find this take does nothing but let them off the hook.

plagiarist2• 2 months ago

It's worthy if they think they'd get good click through rate on "privacy protection service" scam links in the emails.

amazingamazing• 2 months ago

Right up there with the rest or telco.

coloneltcb• 2 months ago

this is especially problematic because now hackers have a comprehensive list of the most gullible people on the planet

helterskelter• 2 months ago

Every problem, looked at from the right perspective, is actually a solution.

drfloyd51• 2 months ago

I wouldn’t call this a problem.

This is the dildo of consequences.

866-RON-0-FEZ2• 2 months ago

They must have hired the same developers as every other mobile operator.

morkalork2• 2 months ago

Or the same devs as GiveSendGo and every other right-wing gifting platform

Jeremy1026• 2 months ago

Gifting, or grifting?

dataflow• 2 months ago

The company said there was no breach of Trump Mobile’s network, systems, or infrastructure.

Wait... what?

"I didn't lose your money because somebody broke into my house -- I only lost it because I left it sitting on the sidewalk. My house is actually fine, don't worry!"

ourmandave• 2 months ago

The spokesperson said that the exposure was linked to a third-party platform provider that supports “certain Trump Mobile operations.” Walker did not name the provider.

Assuming somebody left a database open or password exposed.

thefreeman2• 2 months ago

My money is on unauthed mongodb or public s3 bucket

thefreeman2• 2 months ago

Well trump mobile almost definitely doesn't have a network, systems, or infrastructure to begin with. So I guess they are technically correct.

dmbche3• 2 months ago

Has anyone yet seen one of those phones? Was it a honeypot all along? (A la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield)

Edit0: they seem to exist and they have a headphone jack? Incredible.

ipython• 2 months ago

I was going to say that I saw some unwrapping videos online, but then I saw... https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/936018/trump-mobile-t1-phon....

Personally, I still use my BidenPhone, which was an upgrade from my 2009-era ObamaPhone brick. /s

nathanmills• 2 months ago

Was the /s needed?

zikduruqe• 2 months ago

The real joke is the "Obama Phone" meme from back in the day, is from the Lifeline project that was started by Reagan.

It's funny to see how all the history has been scrubbed from the Wikipedia entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lifeline_(FCC_pro...

neogodless• 2 months ago

In theory, maybe? This is behind a paywall...

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets/trump-mobile-phone-revi...

Title: Trump Mobile T1 phone test: device no longer ‘Made in the USA.’

Heading: We tested the Trump Mobile phone. It was 9 months late and no longer ‘Made in the USA.’

And then there's https://www.cnet.com/pictures/the-t1-trump-phone-is-the-same... (linked in the sibling comment at The Verge)

"Trump Phones Are Finally Here—And People Aren’t Happy"

tzs• 2 months ago

From the CNET article:

There is a headphone jack, but it's on the top of the phone.

They say that like it is a bad thing. I've always preferred the headset jack on the top because if I'm using the device while sitting and the jack is on the bottom it interferes with resting my phone holding hand the table if I'm at my desk or on my chest or leg if I'm the couch.

The main argument I've heard for jack on the bottom is that most people normally put their phone in their pocket with the top down, so if the jack is on top you have to flip it.

Google is telling me that jack on top was the norm in the early days of smartphones but gradually changed as the pocket argument won out.

Of course this wouldn't matter at all if more phones rotated the screens so that the display was upright even if the phone is upside down. Then everyone could have the headphone jack where they want.

FireBeyond• 2 months ago

They went instead with "Assembled in the USA" printed on the box, which means that the phone was put in its box in Florida.

"Official" MAGA hats now say "Made in PRC" as if their wearers are too stupid to realize that means People's Republic of China, after the backlash against "Made in China". It's not a bad bet, actually: a media outlet back in the day polled a bunch of Republican voters and asked "If the government were to introduce, instead of Obamacare, some form of Affordable Care Act, would you be opposed?"

(And the number one Google query on the last election day? "Did Biden drop out?")

craftkiller2• 2 months ago

they have a headphone jack

And an American flag with the incorrect number of stripes. I wonder which 2 colonies they decided weren't worth including on their phone.

platevoltage3• 2 months ago

I'm going to guess New York and Massachusetts.

ChoGGi2• 2 months ago

Oh.. you're not kidding. That's uh something.

eudamoniac• 2 months ago

The text is stylistically the last stripe

adam12• 2 months ago

Why all the hate for headphone jacks?

tempodox• 2 months ago

It’s insufficiently iPhone-like.

dmbche3• 2 months ago

Oh it's praise from me, which is why its incredible

starkeeper• 2 months ago

Hey it's no biggie they are exempt from all rules, norms, and principals. Their customers love it even more when rules are broken so this is more like a bonus for them.

kibwen3• 2 months ago

When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the PII.

lanewinfield• 2 months ago

comment of the year award

46493168• 2 months ago

The picture in the article features Trump holding an iPhone.

ethagnawl• 2 months ago

He doesn't use any of this crap. He also wouldn't go within 100 feet of the vast majority of his supporters if he wasn't working an angle.

etchalon2• 2 months ago

I can think of no product with the Trump name that hasn't proven to be a catastrophic disappointment or scam.

SomeHacker44• 2 months ago

The only thing with trump I like is a hand of bridge.

klaff• 2 months ago

we started using the term obama for that just because we hate saying that other word

shoxidizer• 2 months ago

The 1989 board game is supposedly an acceptable variation on Monopoly. I guess it's sales were a disappointment for the publisher, but not catastrophic.

PaulHoule2• 2 months ago

The steaks were probably OK.

etchalon2• 2 months ago

The steaks sold through Sharper Image?

platevoltage3• 2 months ago

I mean, his reality TV show did well. It was awful, but people liked it.

Findecanor• 2 months ago

I'm surprised that the idea for the Trump Phone was even conceived. I had thought that the drug king-pin Pablo Escobar pretty much owned the market for gold smartphones, and thus tainted it for anyone else.

cess11• 2 months ago

What is the US president, if not the king-pin:est of drug kin-pins?

https://www.amazon.com/Fort-Bragg-Cartel-Trafficking-Special...

sizzzzlerz• 2 months ago

Oh, no! What an unexpected tragedy. In other news...

twobitshifter• 2 months ago

Coffeezilla bought one of these thinking they’d never be delivered about a week before they announced they would be shipping soon. He wanted to do an exposé on the delays and thought Trump would never release the phone He will now end up with a crappy phone and his personal info exposed

gowld2• 2 months ago

They haven't shipped yet. Only 2 media/reviewer mockup phones have been seen in public.

motbus32• 2 months ago

My grandpa is almost 80 years old. He blatantly complains about stuff he doesn't understand but because he was once a big shot he think he does. He takes decisions almost as random as a 20 side dice but the numbers are just options and have no correlation among each other. Eventually he does something that seems to make sense, but if you live enough time with him you'll see that's by chance.

floren• 2 months ago

Wow, what's it like being the president's grandkid?

PaulHoule2• 2 months ago

When I’m that I want my grandkid to think I am always right mysteriously and never realize it’s because I am past-posting.

motbus32• 2 months ago

He was once president or something of a Country Club where he only let the rich to go. It was kinda lame cause he kept bullying some foreigner workers for no reason. He was in charge until people noted he was even more senile than the previous club owner

fsckboy• 2 months ago

He takes decisions almost as random as a 20 side dice

I'll bet he knows it's a "20 sided die" though, or is he that dumb?

sebastiennight2• 2 months ago

The Oxford dictionary would like a word, and mention that "dice" in singular form is the more frequent use in the gaming sense:

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/die_n1

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

plagiarist2• 2 months ago

The only surprise would be that it is not deliberate. Previously, the Trump White House deliberately exposed citizens' personal data. That's what customers should expect.

zombot2• 2 months ago

Not just expect, but wish for it. "It's OK when our guy does it." You could make a campaign out of it: "Show your support by letting your data get sold!" That should stick it to whomever they dislike this week.

OgsyedIE• 2 months ago

Given the facts of who it is that's impacted, isn't this the first good thing the administration has done?

zombot2• 2 months ago

I'm sure those good people have nothing to hide.

matneyx• 2 months ago

By the headline, I was half expecting "Trump Mobile was found selling customers' personal data"

cdrnsf• 2 months ago

This isn’t surprising. The entire enterprise was a grift to take advantage of gullible adherents to the name.

rsynnott• 2 months ago

This has to be an absolute treasure trove for scammers. A list of the most gullible people around.

squarefoot• 2 months ago

A $499 phone? Hah! Then what about a $11,500 Donald Trump autographed guitar that is actually made in China?

https://gettrumpguitars.com/products/american-eagle-electric...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lITeteouppU

platevoltage3• 2 months ago

You have to wonder what the appeal of this is. Would I want a guitar autographed by Andy Summers? Absolutely. Would I want a guitar autographed by Steve Wozniak? no, not really.

tjpnz• 2 months ago

So they were hiring ex-DOGE?

Trump Mobile exposed customers' personal data

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