Well isn’t this a lovely TGI F-you this morning: two more Australian telecommunications companies owned by Optus have warned tens of thousands of current and former customers their personal information could have been exposed in last week’s data breach. Great.
Optus has confirmed former customers of Virgin Mobile, which shutdown in 2018, and current and former Gomo customers’ data was stolen along with 10 million Optus customers’ details. The data included names, dates of birth, contact information and identification information including driver’s licence and passport numbers.
Both mobile companies were purchased by Optus as wholly owned subsidiaries.
Optus also resells its mobile services to other external companies including Dodo, Amaysim, Circles.Life and iiNet.
Amaysim said on Thursday its customers were not caught up in the data breach, but we don’t yet know what’s happened to the other customers’ data.
The Australian Information Commissioner announced she would probe Optus’ compliance with data breach requirements.
“All organisations need to assess the risk a data breach poses to compromising their own customers’ data and ensure additional safeguards are in place,” Commissioner Angelene Falk said on Thursday.
Anyone affected has been told by state and territory governments they can apply for a new driver’s licence and Optus will foot the bill. A new licence costs about 30 bucks depending on where you live. The Federal Government has also told Optus it will need to cough up for the cost of replacing customers’ passports, which cost around $300 each. He said it was a “stuff-up” Optus had to pay for, not its customers.
With 10 million customers, uh… you do the maths.
And while this shitstorm rages, where in the world is Optus’ Managing Director of Enterprise, Business and Institution Gladys Berejiklian?
In the meantime, if you’re a customer worried about your data there are a few steps you can take to ensure it’s safe in future.
