Telstra blames privacy breach on 'database misalignment'

Telstra has disclosed a privacy breach, reportedly involving over 130,000 customers whose details were mistakenly published online via Directory Assistance and the White Pages when they should have been unlisted.

The telco’s chief financial officer Michael Ackland said it is “in the process” of notifying the impacted customers and removing their listings.

Ackland apologised and said that the telco is “conducting an internal investigation to better understand how it happened and to protect against it happening again.”

He said that “a misalignment of the databases used to provide” Directory Assistance and the White Pages led to the details of customers that elected to be unlisted, being mistakenly listed.

Impacted data included “customers’ names, numbers and addresses”.

The telco said “no cyber activity was involved” in the privacy breach.

It is offering impacted customers support via IDCARE.

The breach is the second incident in a year for Telstra involving details of unlisted customers.

This time last year, Telstra was penalised $2.5 million for failing to upload information about whether over 115,000 customers wanted an unlisted or silent phone number to the integrated public number database (IPND).