Telstra password leak breached Privacy Act
The Australian Privacy Commissioner has found Telstra breached the Privacy Act when it exposed thousands of customer records to the public over the internet last year.
Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim said the telco breached National Privacy Principle 2.1 and 4.1 as it “did not take reasonable steps to protect customers' personal information from unauthorised access and disclosure”.
Telstra reset 73,000 customer passwords in December after an internal tool containing sensitive information for a total 806,000 subscribers — including passwords, usernames, phone numbers and addresses — were inadvertently exposed on the internet. Approximately 734,000 records in total were exposed.
