Telstra reprimanded after ACMA finds 140,000 silent numbers were made publicly available
Telstra has been castigated by the telecommunications watchdog for making tens of thousands of silent numbers, including those of domestic violence victims, public.
Telstra has been reprimanded for making public the phone details of more than 140,000 people, including domestic violence victims, who had requested to keep their details private.
As many as 24,000 “silent” numbers were wrongly published in the White Pages.
Australia’s largest telco was found on 163,000 occasions to have made those details publicly available, and the majority of that occurred between 2021 and 2022.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority accused Australia’s largest telco of failing to safeguard the privacy of its customers and putting their safety at risk.
“While we are not aware of any harm to people as a result of these breaches, Telstra failing to safeguard customer information, putting people’s privacy and safety at risk, is a serious matter,” ACMA consumer lead Samantha Yorke said.
“Telstra is entrusted with personal details of millions of Australians and those people have the right to expect that Telstra has robust systems and processes in place to ensure their information is being protected.”
A Telstra spokesman said the telco had identified the issue a couple of years ago and had since fixed the issues that allowed it to take place.
“We found this issue in 2022, immediately reported our findings to the ACMA, took corrective action and communicated with customers,” he said.
“Since it occurred we have significantly upgraded our systems through major software and technology improvements, and we conduct regular sweeps to pick up any potential misalignments.”
The telco has been given a series of guidelines it must follow or face a civil penalty in the Federal Court of up to $10m per contravention.
Telstra has been ordered to reconcile its customer data with its White Pages and directory assistance database listing every six months.
The telco has also been ordered to implement a training program for staff and to have an independent audit of its compliance procedures.
The remedial direction must remain in place until auditors confirm Telstra’s new procedures are effective.
The breach follows a $306,360 fine from ACMA in November last year after Telstra failed to provide details correctly to a public database used by emergency services to locate people in the event of a natural disaster.
At the time, Telstra was also found on 600 occasions to have flagged the details of silent numbers – which could have included people escaping domestic violence situations or people under protective services – for listing in the database.
Similarly, the telco had self-reported issues related to its passing of customer information to the Integrated Public Number Database, a database which is used by federal departments, law enforcement and national security agencies to reach people who might be in danger or to pass along critical weather updates.
That database is also used for publishing public number directories and electoral, health and government policy research.
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