AFP demands US site takes down PM’s phone number

Australia’s federal police have stepped in to demand an American website remove Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s phone number from its directory as steps are taken to improve the security of several other politicians whose contact details were compromised, including Opposition Leader Sussan Ley.

Speaking at Parliament House on Tuesday morning, acting prime minister Richard Marles said: “We’re obviously aware of this. We’ve notified authorities, and that is being worked through, but obviously, there is concern.”

The prime minister’s phone number has been published online. Credit: James Brickwood

“The AFP is aware that the private contact details of some parliamentarians are available online through overseas businesses,” a spokesperson for the force confirmed. “The AFP is formally seeking for the prime minister’s personal contact details to be removed from these sites.”

The AFP spokesman said “relevant agencies” were working on a range of measures to deal with the security breaches “for all affected parliamentarians”.

Alongside Albanese and Ley, the site lists other numbers for several MPs, verified by this masthead, as well as other public figures such as former prime minister Scott Morrison, former foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop and numbers for other world leaders, including US President Donald Trump’s former business number.

A spokesman for Ley said: “We were made aware of this issue when media contacted us yesterday. This is obviously concerning, and we have reached out to LinkedIn to understand what occurred here. We are waiting for their response. We have asked the website to remove the information.”

The publication of phone numbers was first reported by Ette Media, after co-founder Antoinette Lattouf’s personal contact details were posted to the website.

The contact registry website, based in the US, offers an opt-out form for users to remove their profile, with contact details taken down within a week of the request being made. Some numbers appeared to be wrong when checked by this masthead.

LinkedIn has been touted as a possible source of the phone numbers scraped by the website, but a spokesperson for the site said they had seen no evidence of a breach of their data. “Our policies are clear that third-party companies taking personal data and using it in ways our members did not agree to is prohibited, and these companies are not affiliated with LinkedIn,” a spokesperson said.

Listings of employment status and history of many people on the site mirror public LinkedIn profiles. The website has been contacted for comment.

Tom Sulston, head of policy at Digital Rights Watch, said the publication of politicians’ contact details was likely to be nothing more than a nuisance, but was of real concern to others who might want their details kept private.

“In terms of Anthony Albanese, the worst thing that’s probably going to happen to him with his phone being leaked is he’ll get a few prank calls, and then he’ll have to get a new phone number ... but if you’re someone who’s getting out of domestic violence, your address is leaked, that could be literally fatal,” Sulston said.

While the source of the data is unclear, there have been a number of high-profile data leaks in Australia in recent years, including from companies such as Optus, Medibank, and Qantas. The personal data of 5.7 million Qantas customers was published on the dark web last week.

Australian Army cybersecurity co-ordinator Lieutenant General Michelle McGuinness confirmed at Senate estimates last week that the Qantas hack included the home addresses and phone numbers of several high office holders. Almost all federal MPs have Chairman’s Club memberships with Qantas.

“Could the data have come from one or some of those? Yeah. Could this company have gone on to the dark web and gone and bought data sets of 5 million Australians? They could have done that. Could we prove it? It would be very difficult,” Sulston said.

This masthead does not suggest that the website illegally obtained data.

Sulston said that companies already collected and stored more data than they needed to, and changes to online behaviour stemming from the under-16 social media ban that will start on December 10 – including age verification through the provision of government ID – are likely to make the situation worse.

In 2017, the Department of Parliamentary Services accidentally published the private phone numbers of hundreds of federal politicians, including former prime ministers. The department had intended to publish a redacted list of politicians’ phone bills, but instead included phone numbers in a white font that could be read if copied and pasted.

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