I didn’t know anything about this situation in Turkey until a tweet by Aaron Martin alerted me to it:
The Information Technologies and Communications Authority (BTK) has fined the country’s three major mobile phone operators, Turkcell, Avea and Vodafone, a total of TL 13.6 million ($7.5 million) for violating the privacy of their clients.
These telecommunications firms opened phone lines called “open lines” using the personal information of their customers and registered multiple phone lines under one individual’s name. As a result, customers had other phone numbers in their name which they were unaware of. In 2009, the BTK implemented a new regulation and prohibited the use of personal information to register phone lines without the consent of the individual in order to prevent the use of these numbers by criminals. They gave a timeline to operators to minimize the number of these “open lines,” also informing them of the possible measures that could be taken against them if they failed to comply with the new regulation.
Read more on Today’s Zaman.