Telstra has explained how it accidentally published tens of thousands of customers’ data on the World Wide Web, even though they explicitly asked the telco to keep their personal details unlisted.
Telstra chief financial officer Michael Ackland told ABC Radio Melbourne on Monday the personal information — consisting of names, numbers and addresses — of 132,000 customers was accidentally made available via directory assistance and the White Pages due to a database “error”.
“It’s an error between those databases that we discovered through our regular audit and reconciliation processes,” he said.
“We’ve now gone and removed all of that data that was published where a customer legitimately requested us not to publish it.”
Ackland previously confirmed in an that the telco had not been hacked, and understood that customers had been “let down” by the ginormous whoopsie doodle.
“We’re sorry it occurred, and we know we have let you down.”
Telstra has contacted affected customers and offered them free services to protect against identity theft.
According to the , one customer received a letter informing them that their personal information has been publicly available from August 13, 2021 until December 5 this year.
Ruh roh, Raggy!
It’s certainly been a big year for data breaches, which is a truly depressing sentence.
Nearly 10 million current and former Optus customers had their in September.
A 19-year-old Sydney bloke , and a Melbourne family who had their details breached in the hack revealed they’ve .
And then 9.7 million current and former Medibank customers and authorised representatives had their in October, which saw hackers release documents containing information about sensitive medical procedures.
In an exceptionally disturbing and misogynistic attack, hackers posted a file named “abortion”, .
The federal government in October, which would see companies cop ‘yuge fines if they’re involved in serious breaches or are hacked several times.
Methinks such laws can’t be passed soon enough.
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