Privacy Breach: Telstra was going to tell its customers, when?

Image from The Age 10 December 2011

http://telstratccmail.custhelp.com/app/bundles_search/

Sensible Telstra customers will be changing their passwords promptly as a first measure after reading this in The Australian this morning:

TELSTRA faces the wrath of the federal Privacy Commissioner after leaving details of potentially millions of customers exposed on the web, reportedly including their user names and passwords.

The details were exposed on a search page used by Telstra customer service agents that was left unprotected and openly accessible on the web.

The page, titled "Telstra Bundles request search", was reportedly discovered by a user of the community broadband forum Whirlpool.

Telstra hastily took down the site after it became aware of the breach yesterday afternoon, but not before computer security experts showed it could be used to access customer details including their account numbers, broadband packages, technician visits, and in some cases their email user names and individual passwords.

Media reports suggested credit check details (but not credit card details) were also accessible, but that has not been confirmed by Telstra.

Telstra said it was uncertain how many customers' details were potentially breached.

"It's unsure at this stage -- it appears to be limited to bundled customers but we don't know how many," a Telstra spokeswoman said.

In its annual report for this year, Telstra said it had sold 659,000 new product bundles in the year to June 30.

Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim has been made aware of the breach and a full investigation and report will be completed as soon as possible.

The Telstra spokeswoman said the carrier's priority was to close the security gap.

The company would move as quickly as possible to notify customers of the breach and maintain transparency in reporting details of the incident….

Whirlpool forum regular exposes this privacy fail (emanating from what looks suspiciously like an internal company database whose creation and management may have been outsourced) at 1.08pm 9 December 2011:

Ugh, well, after a series of good experiences dealing with Telstra over the last eighteen months it feels like we're back in the bad old days. Tl;dr: Telstra is an enormous corporation with a seemingly endless number of autonomous departments, none of which knows what any of the others is doing. Telstra have leaked customer information onto the Web. I signed up for the $78 deal on 24th November—hadn't previously had a bundle on my account, or a Bigpond connection. Got my bill by email yesterday and, sure enough, the discount wasn't applied. First thing I did was to jump onto online chat. Had to wait over 10 minutes for a consultant (which was fine because I could basically just get on with my work). He didn't know anything about the $78 offer, but I gave him the link, it felt like he was about to apply the discount both to my current bill and to future bills, but then he told me that I would have to ring 1800 330 192. OK. I rang 1800 330 192 and after some humming and hawing the guy there gave me the $13 credit on my bill for this month ($10 plus the discount for the pro-rata initial period), but said that they don't in fact know anything about the $78 deal, and that I would have to ring the 'Bundles' department at 1800 008 851. Incidentally, if you do a Google search for that number, you get a very interesting result. Um, Telstra, that's customer information just sitting out on the open Web… That page also seems to suggest that he shouldn't have given me the number, but should have put me through…….

Despite this unforgivable privacy breach, I'm told Telstra is not making it easy for customers to access their accounts to change passwords as its My BigPond is currently offline due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems.

The art of the small

From the wonderful lens of Pieces of Contentment, a Northern New South Wales blog……..

A classic two-faced political balfastard?

And Aussie pollies wonder why they have such a credibility problem…………..

Nationals Lismore MP Thomas George, whose son Cr. Stuart George (who reportedly owes him a considerable pile of dosh) is currently employed by the coal seam gas industry:

“Mr George said he had been working behind closed doors to make representations {concerning coal seam gas issues} on behalf of his constituents to Resources Minister Chris Hartcher.”

Betcha didn't know this APN staffer was so talented

The Daily Examiner is always guaranteed to provide a bit of light relief and Thursday's edition was no exception. It carried wine reviews by a bloke who previously paraded around the Clarence valley posing as a newspaper editor. Nowadays the bloke's associated with APN on Queensland's Fraser coast.
Thursday's Examiner treated its readers to the bloke's reviews of three Aussie wines. His reviews of Taylors 2011 Sauvignon Blanc, Mandala 2010 Blanc De Blancs and Yellowglen NV Spritz Chilled White provided enough evidence to confirm that Huon Hooke, James Halliday et al can sleep comfortably at night, knowing Pete isn't going to take their jobs.

 Image credit: The Daily Examiner, 8/12/11

On feeling OLD........

Whatever happened to liquorice straps, sherbet cones, slate pencils, genuine musk sticks, rainbow balls, allsorts, mint leaves, bulls eyes, candy hearts, snow balls, caramel chews, tiny macaroons, freckles made with quality chocolate, big fat jelly babies with faces and navels, cobbers the size of doorstops and stick jaw toffees?

Oh, I feel OLD when I read this Roy Morgan graph with its list of sterile, globalised lollies:

Oi, Richie! Please explain that extra council rate gouge

This is what NSW Independent Pricing And Regulatory Tribunal said when it set the council rate peg percentage for 2012/13 at 3.6% on 6^th December 2011:

* we took the increase of 3.4% in the Local Government Cost Index (LGCI) for the year to September 2011

* we deducted a productivity factor of 0.2%

* for this year only, we have added a carbon price advance of 0.4%.

This is what Clarence Valley Mayor and recently unsuccessful Nationals pre-selection candidate, Richie Williamson, told ratepayers in The Daily Examiner on 8^th December:

“..council's costs would rise by between .4 and .5% as a result of the tax, and the local government minister had factored in a carbon tax increase of .5% when determining the rate-pegging limit.”

Now if Bazza O’Farrell and Local Government Minister Don Page have indeed granted Clarence Valley Council an extra .1% increase above the IPART ruling, fellow travellers Richie, Bazza and Don need to explain why this isn’t an attempt to gouge local ratepayers based on an ideological desire to cast the Federal Gillard Government in a bad light.