from www.infoworld.com -A recent story on Consumerist.org had me chuckling. It appears that some T-Mobile customers have been logging in to their online billing accounts, only to be greeted with photos of naked women and naughty sex acts.

As it turns out, T-Mobile’s Web site stores photos that have been sent to your phone at your online MobileLife section, a section that appears alongside your bill and usage data when you log on. Though seeing naked photos here might be a common occurrence for people who go in for that sort of thing (nudge nudge), many customers insist that the files are not theirs.

[ Also on InfoWorld, Gripe Line uncovers more cell phone shenanigans in “Verizon billing error may be rampant” | Frustrated by tech support? Get answers in InfoWorld’s Gripe Line newsletter. ]

One letter to Consumerist explained how the photos on his T-Mobile page turned into a very uncomfortable situation for him at work while he was trying to sort out some billing issues with his staff. (Oh, snap!) No amount of protesting that the porn was not his convinced his disapproving employees.

So, T-Mobile customers, a heads-up: Be careful about loading your MobileLife site in front of the boss — at least until this gets straightened out.

I contacted T-Mobile to find out what’s going on. The answer isn’t too surprising if you connect the dots. Here is the official statement:

T-Mobile is aware of reports from a few customers who have seen inappropriate or unwanted pictures in their online “MyAlbum” section within their MyT-Mobile account. We are taking these reports seriously and actively investigating these issues.

Our initial analysis of the reports leads us to believe that pictures were likely sent to some customers’ mobile number by a third party, whether the customers knew the sender or not. If a customer has not had picture messaging enabled on their handset, a picture sent to them may be delivered only to their online MyAlbum account. For this reason, some customers are surprised when they see the picture for the first time in their MyT-Mobile account.

We will continue to investigate the reports but if customers would like to avoid receiving picture messages in the future they can explore using T-Mobile’s Message Blocking features which are accessed through their MyT-Mobile account online.

It sounds like this is porn that has been spammed to mobile numbers or that the images were sent by accident to the wrong number. (I think the latter qualifies as embarrassing too, especially if your images were posted at Consumerist, regardless of kittens covering the naughty bits.) In any case, if you get caught with nude photos on your MobileLife page, at least you now have plausible deniability.