"Get a Discount on Your Bill When Returning Your Phone"... Customers Lured, Then 'Naked Photos' Restored and Leaked

Cell phone agency. Not related to the article.
Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Na Ye-eun] An incident occurred where a mobile phone sales agency lured customers by promising discounts if they returned their old phones, then restored and leaked photos from the returned devices.

According to MBC's "News Desk" on the 23rd, a woman in her 20s, Ms. A, who is active as a YouTuber, visited a KT agency near Hongik University in Seoul last March to purchase a new smartphone and returned her previously used phone. Later, in May, she was contacted by an unknown person claiming "personal information was leaked."

Previously, Ms. A deleted private photos herself before returning the phone when she changed devices. She said, "They told me if I wrote down the password, they would initialize the phone, so I wrote it on a Post-it and gave it to them," but added, "The next day, I thought the discount conditions were strange, so I visited the agency again and retrieved my phone."

However, during that time, Ms. A's private photos were leaked. Within a day, agency employees restored all the deleted photos and shared them with colleagues. A former employee who worked at the agency said, "When I went into the storage room, I saw 3 to 4 people gathered looking at phones, so I asked 'What is this?' and saw them sharing nude photos."

Ms. A's private photos were indiscriminately distributed not only among agency employees but also to third parties. In May, a man contacted Ms. A, saying "personal information was leaked," and sent her nine photos of hers.

Ms. A appealed, "All of them were photos from my phone's gallery. Among them were nude photos taken to compare before and after dieting. It was mentally very difficult." She continued, "I feel very anxious every time I pass by KT. I wonder, 'Did that employee see them too?' It threatens my entire career, and I don't know when everything might collapse. I wanted to die."

Meanwhile, KT headquarters stated, "This is a criminal act by employees of a commissioned agency, not by the headquarters."