Your Odido router may have been sharing personal data with a foreign AI firm: here’s what to know

And customers had no idea.

Do you have an Odido router in your home? There’s a reason it’s so affordable. The Dutch network operator has allegedly been sharing detailed information about your home network with a foreign AI firm.

While working on a project for MIT, an ethical hacker in the Netherlands made an accidental discovery.

Sipke Mellema learned that his Odido (formerly T-Mobile) router had been forwarding data about the devices in his home to Lifemote, an AI-based home Wi-Fi solution for Internet Service Providers.

A Telegraaf report later confirmed the pentester’s (penetration tester) findings, adding that Odido had failed to disclose its side gig to customers in its privacy policy.

What information is leaving your home

How bad is the damage, you ask?

Odido routers were reportedly transmitting the names and MAC addresses of every device on your home network. A MAC address is a unique code that every device carries, and you can think of it as a digital fingerprint.

In addition to the name of the device, the kind that reads “Kriti’s iPhone” or “Bedroom TV,” it paints a precise picture of what is in your home and where you are connected.

Is it just me, or did #odido omit certain things from this leak disclosure email? Left: the email detailing what was or wasn't leaked (in Dutch) Right: haveibeenpwned entry taking information from their official disclosure, which contradicts it.

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— Adam Hay (@antireality.bsky.social) March 1, 2026 at 10:43 PM

The router was also sending the names and identifiers of nearby wifi networks, including personal hotspots.

As if that’s not bad enough, it also forwarded general statistics about your data usage.

Mellema notes wryly in his post, “I’m glad the router’s security is so poor. At least then I can see what it’s doing.”

What Odido says

Odido has not publicly commented on Mellema’s findings or the Telegraaf’s exposé.

The internet provider for more than six million households in the Netherlands simply deferred journalists to its privacy policy.

Dating back to September 2025, Odido’s privacy statement explicitly mentions the collection of modem data.

The privacy statement further explains why Odido must process personal data. Aside from the purpose of delivering the internet, it vaguely cites “legitimate interest” and “legal obligation.”

However, there is no disclosure that this information is passed to third-party companies outside of the Netherlands, like Lifemote.

Not an isolated incident

This isn’t the first time Odido’s approach to customer information has drawn scrutiny.

The provider has previously been fined for sharing customer traffic records with Statistics Netherlands (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek) for algorithm development without obtaining proper consent.

Last month, the company was hacked, and when Odido refused to pay the ransom, the personal data of millions of customers was floating about on the dark web.

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As of now, Odido’s software appears to have been updated, based on Mellema’s own observation that transmissions to Lifemote completely stopped after his post gained traction.

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Feature image:Depositphotos

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Kriti Swarup
Kriti Swaruphttps://www.kritiswarup.com/
Kriti Swarup is a writer and multimedia journalist based in Amsterdam. Originally from New Delhi, she moved to the Netherlands in 2022. Writing for DutchReview is her way of making sense of assimilation and helping fellow internationals find a home between cultures. A cum laude graduate in media and culture from the University of Amsterdam, Kriti has reported on topics ranging from art and lifestyle to business and technology. When she isn’t working (or rewatching Game of Thrones), she is usually, and somewhat perpetually, trying to learn Dutch.

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