Optus has scrambled to contact customers whose personal details were revealed in a system glitch, affecting pre-paid mobile sim card activation and the company’s account website.
Some customers have reported being able to see what looked like other customers’ personal details, including names, addresses and phone numbers while trying to activate a mobile phone sim card.
“I tried to activate a $30 sim, and the first time I did it it seemed to go through OK – except for when I clicked on the review your order button,” Luke Elson told Guardian Australia.
“All the details were wrong, the sim number, the name and address – the person must have been transferring their number over, so it also had someone else’s phone number,” he said.
Elson was concerned his information might have also been visible to other people.
Guardian Australia was able to independently reproduce the error before parts of Optus’s website were shut down to address the issue.
After filling out some details personal details for what appeared to be two other Optus customers became visible, including their names, dates of birth and driving licence numbers.
Some angry customers vented their frustration on social media about the glitch.
Liz Braddon said the system was trying to allocate a mobile number to herself and someone else at the same time.
“I was suddenly confronted with pre-filled data that obviously belonged to someone else,” she said on Optus’s Facebook site.
“I have someone’s name and birthday showing – he/she was born after 2000. I was given [a] full name, birthday, email and physical address for this other person.”
Matthew Glover also experienced problems with sim card activation.
“So apparently if you activate a new prepaid sim card with Optus at the exact same time as 17 other people all their activation emails get sent to you and you still don’t get to activate your own damn sim,” he said.
Glover expressed frustration that his case had been shuffled around to four different call centre staff and he had to explain the problem each time.
Another customer named Cameron Worts reported problems logging into the “my account” section of the website and seeing other people’s personal details
“This is very concerning,” he said.
Some customers were reporting their accounts were being logged on as “Vladamir” or “Sarah.”
Sucheta (@sgorolay)
Hey @Optus I just got an email saying my latest bill is ready. Its $300. It should be less than $100 as my usual plan. I logged into my account and it said “Hi Vladamir”. I have a screenshot. What’s the go??!
The telco said it was aware some customers reported seeing incorrect information when activating their prepaid service, and when logging into the “my account” section to pay their bills.
“We apologise to any customer who may have experienced this issue and will be contacting any customer who may have been impacted,” a spokeswoman said.
The company said it was working with “third party vendors to identify the cause of yesterday’s issue”.
Source: The Guardian
