Consumer advocates have been arguing with Schufa for years, but now things are suddenly happening very quickly: Since Friday, Schufa has been deleting data about cell phone contracts on a large scale. “Telecommunications companies and Schufa have decided to delete information on contract accounts from the telecommunications sector,” writes Schufa on its website. The deletion campaign will start on October 20th; according to the Tagesschau, it involves the data of 20 million cell phone customers.
The background to the current data destruction is a dispute that has been simmering for two years. In September 2021, the authorities decided that it was not okay for telecommunications providers to report every cell phone contract they concluded to Schufa. This was also confirmed by the Munich I Regional Court in spring 2023 in a (not yet final) judgment against the O2 provider Telefónica (ref. 33 O 5976/22).
According to the ruling, so-called positive data, i.e. “information about the application, implementation and termination of a contract,” may not be transmitted, but only non-contractual behavior such as non-payment. According to Schufa, the standard contract data has no longer been passed on since the beginning of 2022, but the data already collected has not yet been deleted.
Schufa is now deleting the contract data of millions of cell phone users who never agreed to it being passed on. According to Schufa, this involves so-called positive data that was reported and stored “to protect against fraud and data misuse by third parties”. “It is the information that a telecommunications company has a contract account, i.e. a customer account, which is associated with a credit risk for the telecommunications company.”
However, if you don’t pay your cell phone bill, you will still have to expect negative points in your creditworthiness, as Schufa reports. “Delinquency information continues to be reported and processed as part of credit scores and information.”
Although Schufa potentially deletes millions of pieces of data, it says there will be no major impact. “Our analyzes in advance of the deletion have shown that the scores only change marginally on average,” says Schufa. However, the loss of the supposedly harmless data does have an effect on the bank score, which, according to Schufa, is most often used for credit decisions is used.
The effect can be both positive and negative: “For 53 percent of people the score will be lower after deletion, for 47 percent it will be higher (the higher the better),” writes Schufa. The reason: Long-term contractual relationships with providers have so far had a positive impact However, if many contracts were registered, this could have a negative impact as the probability of non-payment increased statistically.
The North Rhine-Westphalia consumer advice center, which also fought the O2 lawsuit, welcomes the step. “We are pleased that our commitment to consumer rights is now leading to concrete measures in that Schufa is ending the unlawful data storage and deleting the existing data,” says Wolfgang Schuldzinski, board member of the NRW Consumer Center. But this measure can only be the first step. “We continue to call on telecommunications providers to generally stop transmitting positive data to credit agencies.”
However, two law firms that want to file a lawsuit on behalf of thousands of consumers over the data transfer are taking a critical look at the deletion campaign. The lawyers want to sue for up to 5,000 euros in damages per consumer. “Evil tongues say: That’s not giving in, that’s thwarting evidence,” says lawyer Christian Solmecke from the Cologne law firm WBS, who specializes in internet and media law. In the future, mobile phone customers would no longer be able to determine which data the mobile phone operators had illegally transferred to Schufa. “A rogue who thinks evil of it,” comments Solmecke. According to the lawyer, his law firm has so far requested 50,000 pieces of information from Schufa on behalf of mobile phone customers in order to support the lawsuits.
Sources: Schufa / Consumer Center NRW / Munich Regional Court judgment / Solmecke lawyer
