If you ever have massive amounts of data that is supposed to be secure, you are probably better off eating it so that nobody can get their hands on it. Deutsch Telekom, a T-Mobile subsidiary lost a disc containing personal information regarding roughly 17 million of its customers back in early 2006. They have remained silent about it until now.

Deutsche Telekom published its version of the story on Saturday following a report in a German news magazine Der Spiegel that the information contained on the lost disk was being offered for sale on the internet. The data is apparently confined to German customers only as far as they know.

Information on the disk contained customer names, date of birth, addresses, email addresses, and of course, their mobile telephone number. No banking information was stored on the disk.

Upon discovery, the loss was reported to the state prosecutor and the company began monitoring Internet forums, chat rooms, and many Web sites where such stolen information would likely be offered for sale. In the months following the initial loss, there was no indication or evidence that the data was being offered for sale on the market.

However, on Saturday according to Der Spiegel, the data is in fact for sale on the market now. Along with standard user information, the data for sale includes information and unlisted phone numbers for German celebrities, business leaders, billionaires, religious figures and government officials. As of current, T-Mobile claims no reports that the information is being used for the purpose identity theft. Although no mention has been made, a more realistic assumption would be that the data could get used for terrorism or mass spam based advertising, the later being the most plausible.

There has been no report indicating exactly how the loss of the disk occurred. Seeing how the data has been noted for sale on the open market, chances are that someone walked out with it when they could have easily just copied it instead – leaving a lot of questions.

Customers worried about their privacy are able to have their mobile numbers changed for free at this time.

For the record, Deutsch Telekom is also taking a hot bath for paying a little too much attention to the personal details of some of its customers. Internal security staff are being accused of spying on private phone use of its board of directors – it is suspected that some of them are leaking sensitive information to journalists. An independent investigation was launched in May of this year regarding the issue.