Verizon "immediately" fires employee after attempting to stalk Taylor Swift

A Verizon employee was apparently fired when she tried to find Taylor Swift's Verizon account.

Is this the worst reason to get fired from your job – trying to look up a world-famous artist's private information? Well, it's certainly in the top ten, if you ask me.

Verizon took it seriously

This accident was disclosed by an alleged former Verizon employee on Reddit a while ago, but it's still among the most popular topics. While no names are named, the OP (original poster) says that the person who tried to look up personal information on Taylor Swift was "immediately fired". Not only that, but she became a "running gag" at Verizon for losing her job "in the most random and idiotic way possible".

The author also wonders if accounts of famous people are under an alias for privacy reasons, and that makes a lot of sense. Some people take fandom extremely seriously to the point where their obsession can go to stalking (and even darker places). That's why big companies that provide services for VIPs simply can't fully trust their employees and additional barriers should be imposed for protection.

Verizon, of course, took matters into their hands immediately and handled the case right away – the management laid her off.

As the OP clarifies, the ironic thing was that she was a "swiftie" (a hardcore Taylor Swift fan) and apparently didn't think that the whole situation was a "big deal". As the OP says, the fired employee most likely got bored one day at work and decided to look up her idol.

Another commenter says that while this could be the case, it could also be that the fired employee had worked at other carriers, trying to do the same thing. Of course, there is no indication for that, but it sounds logical if we're dealing with a super-obsessed fan.

The MMS "wild west"

Another commenter recalls the "wild west" times when they were able to look up actual MMS messages, but they don't specify which carrier they were working for.

MMS messages were the bee's knees years ago, when we didn't have 24/7 high-speed internet connection on our phones (nor chat clients). MMS was the way to send multimedia like photos, videos, and audio instead of SMS.

Others say that some workers had access to information about the exact times an account made a data connection, sent a text or made a call. "Several of my friends figured out they were being cheated on like that", a commenter says.

Well, are we more or less secure today compared to some years ago? What do you think?

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