Australians are unhappy with Telstra for not protecting their data, and a mysterious hacker who claims to have stolen millions of Optus users' personal information is demanding $1 million as ransom.
Millions of people's personal information including addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, license numbers, and passport numbers will be exposed, the hacker has said, unless Optus pays $1 million in Monero cryptocurrency.
Optus Data Breach
They claim to be in possession of information on 11.2 million Optus customers in a significant breach that tech experts now accept as credible. On Saturday morning, the hackers posted a ransom demand on a website, giving the operator one week to respond.
The warning comes as Optus consumers express their annoyance on social media, with chief executive and parenting expert Dannielle Miller just one of the millions who claim the company's response has been inadequate.
Miller, an Optus client for 30 years, told Daily Mail Australia that she had come to expect more from the telco after such a long period of devotion. The Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin's apology.
Miller declared that she would advise her employees to switch carriers and close the Optus accounts that belonged to her, her daughter, and herself. She said that Optus should reimburse customers for any out-of-pocket costs incurred when they may be need to amend details like their license number, as per Daily Mail.
The cyberattack, according to Anthony Albanese earlier on Monday, was a major wake-up call for the corporate sector over the need to protect people's data. In response to the attack, Jim Chalmers claimed that the federal government was responding effectively, but he wouldn't say how swiftly additional security improvements would be implemented.
The Treasurer responded that Clare O'Neil, the Home Affairs and Cybersecurity Minister, should handle any urgent adjustments needed to safeguard Australians' financial security from similar data breaches. After the Attorney-Department General's presents the Albanese government with its final report on its review of the law, it is anticipated that Australia's privacy laws will also be modified.
Australia Urges to Improve Cybersecurity Laws
The Morrison administration started the review of the Privacy Act in 2020 and put out a number of improvements, including extending users' legal recourse against businesses for data breaches.
Two years prior to last week's incident, Optus lobbied against amending privacy regulations to offer Australians more control over their data. This was because it would have meant losing the personal information of customers dating all the way back to 2017.
The telco behemoth repeatedly resisted proposed amendments to the Privacy Act that would have offered users the option to ask for the deletion of their data. Optus Chief Executive Officer Kelly Bayer Rosmarin stated that as soon as the business became aware of the incident, steps were taken to put a halt to it and an inquiry was started, News reported.
In a statement released this morning, the telco said that it had emailed or SMS messages to all of its customers whose ID document numbers, such as their license or passport number, had been compromised.
Additionally, people are warned not to grant computer access to anyone who phones, even if they pose as representatives of a trustworthy organization and make sure to ignore websites that seem dubious.
Optus also claimed in the letter that it chose to inform the public about the incident because it believed doing so would be the quickest and easiest way to reach the most number of customers, with individual contact to follow, according to 9 News.
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