The wild part: this isn’t a theoretical bug. It’s implementation laziness that other UK networks already solved, as the post notes. ECI leaks have been called out since LTE rolled out—see papers like https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.05007—and automated location mapping is trivial given open mast DBs.

> Attempts were made to reach out to O2 via email (to both Lutz Schüler, CEO and securityincidents@virginmedia.co.uk) on the 26 and 27 March 2025 reporting this behaviour and privacy risk, but I have yet to get any response or see any change in the behaviour.

This is really poor. And why is a Virgin Media address the closest best thing here? https://www.o2.co.uk/.well-known/security.txt should 200, not 404.

To be clear, I have no problem with disclosure in these circumstances given the inaction, but I'm left wondering if this is the sort of thing that NCSC would pick up under some circumstances (and may have better luck communicating with the org)?

O2 used to have a responsible disclosure address - but they removed it a few years back.

When I worked there (many years ago) the security team was excellent. When I emaileld them about an issue last year, they were all gone.

I’m not sure how O2 are still in business - they’re the worst network by far, even Three with their diabolical backhaul situation is better. Only reason I have an O2 SIM along with my EE one is for Priority tickets/signal inside their venues

The really interesting part of this issue is, that under most jurisdictions it probably won't even qualify as hacking. The data is sent out by the network voluntarily and during normal use.

There are no systems at any point tricked into revealing personal data, which is often illegal, even if the hack is trivial. Even appending something like "&reveal_privat_data=true" to an URL might be considered illegal, because there is clear intent to access data you shouldn't be allowed to access. In this case none of that is done.