The largest telecom company in Australia, Telstra Corp Ltd, reported on Sunday that an internal error that leaked customer information affected 132,000 subscribers. According to Telstra, which has 18.8 million customer accounts, or 75 percent of Australia’s population, the information was made public owing to “a misalignment of databases,” according to an internal review.
According to a business blog post published on Friday, “certain customers’ names, numbers, and addresses” were listed when they shouldn’t have been. Telstra pointed Reuters to this blog post.
“We are removing the identified impacted customer details from the Directory Assistance service and the online version of the White Pages,” Telstra chief financial officer Michael Ackland said in a statement.
The inaccurate declaration comes after the business had what it described as a minor data breach in October, attributing it to an incursion by a third party that made certain employee data from 2017 available.
According to local media, a Telstra internal email estimated that 30,000 current and past employees were impacted by the hack.
Since Optus, owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., disclosed on September 22 that a system breach may have affected up to 10 million accounts, the telco, financial, and government sectors in Australia have been on high alert.
One of Australia’s largest cybersecurity breaches was the exposure of information obtained through a sophisticated hack, including home addresses, driver’s licence numbers, and passport numbers.
(With inputs from agencies)
