Follow-up: Telstra cops first TCP warning for privacy breach

Josh Taylor reports:

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has issued Telstra a direction to comply with the privacy clause in the Telecommunications Consumer Protection (TCP) code, following a 2011 privacy breach that left the details of 734,000 broadband customers vulnerable.

In December last year, Telstra inadvertently exposed customer information online after one of its internal tools was indexed by Google and made public. The tool was designed for Telstra employees to search customer records, but anyone with access to the tool could access information about a Telstra customer’s Bundle orders, including their plan, billing account numbers, first and last names, driver’s licence number, username and password, as well as notes about their account.