Responding to the Optus data breach

Optus has notified customers of a recent data breach on 22 September exposing information:

Information which may have been exposed includes customers’ names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, and, for a subset of customers, addresses, ID document numbers such as driver’s licence or passport numbers.  Payment detail and account passwords have not been compromised.

Optus said in a statement all customers whose identifying document numbers were compromised have been contacted but if you want to take further precautions to reduce the risk of personal compromise or identification fraud, we’d recommend the following:

• Resetting all passwords, or at least ones that follow a certain scheme like your Optus account

• Visit the Department of Transport and Main Roads to obtain a new driver’s licence number / customer reference number (queueing up can take an exceptionally long time though, allow a minimum of 1 hour)

• Request a new Medicare number

• Contact the Department of Home Affairs to discuss your passport

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PKCG also recommends going through the Have you been hacked? quiz provided by the Australian Cyber Security Centre to find other ways you can improve on your cybersecurity.

To help protect against fraud, Optus has notified customers to look to reputable sources such as Moneysmart and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

We also recommend the following sources to keep updated:

• Optus Media Centre

• Respond to a data breach notification – Home (oaic.gov.au)

• Customers warned to watch out for scams following Optus data breach | ACCC

• Customers warned to watch out for scams following Optus data breach | Scamwatch

• Identity theft – Moneysmart.gov.au

• Identity fraud – Home (oaic.gov.au)

• Individual Support Services | IDCARE

• ACSC Homepage | Cyber.gov.au