The risk to identity theft impacts on all Optus customers. In SA the government has waived the cost of replacing your drivers licence. There are also costs associated with protecting your identity. At least three things need to happen. Firstly governments need to facilitate ways in which Optus customers can protect their identity. Secondly given the costs should not be borne by taxpayers therefore the Federal Government needs to recover the costs of repairing this from Optus. Thirdly we need to acknowledge that a great deal of data that is routinely collected is used for market research. (Does Optus need to know my date of birth?) As a JP I quite often need to confirm people's identity. We can use this as a model to put a firewall between the business and customer. One way to address this could be to upgrade the Post Offices to assist with this. Again the cost should be borne by the business.

Perhaps it is not smart to have a smart 'phone, especially for those people who are constantly fiddling with the things.

It is utterly ridiculous that a company should demand all this information before giving you a phone number.

It is equally ridiculous that they should keep this information after using it for the purpose they claimed they needed it. It is totally Optus fault that this information is now public, as they did not have adequate security protecting it, & did not hold it isolated from the net.

All costs involved in this mess must be covered by Optus, or their licence to operate in Oz must be canceled.

Hassie, well said.

I totally agree!

The main fault lies with the 'victims' who can't live without the technology, and are so unsuspecting when they hand out private information, not knowing that it can all be scooped up by a crook walking past with a scanner.

Scary stuff all right.

We've had emails from supposedly reputable organisations
sent to us telling us to click on to an invoice for some
package that we had ordered. I simply deleted the emails.
They must think people are stupid - especially if they haven't
ordered anything. They also give no details up front.
Bloody scammers!

Dear Hasbeen,

How's it going old cock? Good?

Heads must roll you say?

Good. How about we start with LNP ex-Minister for Communications Paul Fletcher.

It appears it was he and Dutton who exempted his former employee OPTUS from the more stringent provisions of the security legislation set up in part to deal with things like data breaches.

Yup, Paul Fletcher, from the government you kept defending, was the OPTUS director of corporate and regulatory affairs for 8 years before entering politics and becoming Communications Minister.

Here is a link to OPTUS's submission asking that they not be subjected to the same rules being dealt out to other major corporations and government organisations.
http://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/reports-and-pubs/files/critical-infrastructure-consultation-submissions/EDS103-CISoNS-Optus.PDF

What a tawdry, useless, craven and beholden bunch of clowns the last government turned out to be, and you backed them all the way. Thank god some adults are in charge now.

Do I real think you would turn against them and ask for some accountability? Not really, but it was worth letting you know.

Little value in turning this into a partisan tit for tat. All political parties have been seduced by the idea that when you deregulate you increase productivity and that it will be in the company's interest to behave responsibily and ethically.
The problem is that the priority of all corporations is to maximize profits; the law and regulations are their only constraint. (and even hen they calculate the cost of any fines against income generated.) The difference between the Coalition and the ALP is largely a matter of degree.
Optus and indeed most other companies have learnt that there are profits to be made from data harvesting so they collect as much as they can and then monetize it.
This is why it is so important that Optus be hit with heavy penalties - current legislation is such that the fines can be paid from their petty cash hardly an incentive to behave more responsibly.

Just saw this comment:

"I have been continually surprised and disappointed at the number of people I know who do not seem particularly disturbed by the collection of their data by others. With regard to cell phones they seem to think that it’s their phone, and they pay for it, so they have control."

Dear BAYGON,

Little value you say?

I would disagree.

Properly regulating our capitalist system is the very real responsibility of government.

If obvious conflicts of interest are not called out then the capture of government by corporate interests goes on unchecked. Self regulation is a joke and post offence penalties do not prevent breaches happening in the first place.

Decent regulation helps pre-empt these things occurring, as it should. When corporations are allowed to lobby government ministers, particularly those who were former employees, to be allowed to avoid such regulations then we have a serious problem.

A few weeks ago I was about to buy a ticket in an RSL lottery at a shopping centre but had to give them my name, email address and phone number so they could "sent me a receipt". I would have been happy with just a ticket but they insisted I had no option but to provide that extra data.

Places like Bunnings, Officeworks and JB HiFi also offer digital receipts but they are just another way of building a personal profile of every consumer and their individual spending habits to be potentially on-sold to others and progressively compiled with more information as it came in.

I sponsor various charities throughout the year but am constantly besieged by others because my phone number seems to have been placed on a list of potential donors.

Sites like Facebook are also mined for personal data and people should be wary and vigilant about what information they give away.

This is worth a look -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7pYHN9iC9I

Baycom & perhaps others;
At the medical centre I attend there is another patient with the same
name so when booking they often ask for my date of birth.

Government agencies could've done the hack themselves for all we know to ensure the changes they want are pushed through without resistance from industry.

Also if I were to give the topic more thought, I recall MANY times where I've called up my telco, and their staff and call centres aren't even located in Australia.
I remember a situation during the pandemic, where the call centre staff of an Aussie telco I use (call centre located overseas) weren't even allowed to take the payment information, probably because staff in Pakistan were either selling the data or using it to privately steal from customers accounts.

Ultimately I think this will be used as part of a push towards digital ID.

I predict that industries will have to check and verify customer-given ID against the government ID database, and then automatically delete it, which will in turn give the government greater access not just to your data, but precisely where you use it.

Personally, I'd like for multinational companies that do business in Australia, to be required to have their call centre staff in Australia and not be permitted to access that data from overseas, or kept on a cloud server.
After all, a cloud server is just 'someone else's computer'.

http://www.afr.com/technology/why-australia-s-privacy-laws-failed-to-stop-the-optus-hack-20220927-p5blc7

"Australia’s privacy laws were already under review before the attack; the current Privacy Act was written in 1988, so well before sharing your personal information digitally was commonplace.

The Coalition government announced a review of the act, and whether it is fit for purpose in the digital economy, in 2020, and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus took up the cause when Labor won government in May.

The Optus hack has strengthened Labor’s commitment to seeing through the reforms quickly. After originally pledging the changes would come into force in Labor’s first term, Dreyfus now says he wants the reforms passed in the remaining four parliamentary sitting weeks this year."