Sunday 2 October 2022 05:15 AM Optus under fire over hack as Attorney General Mark Dreyfus questions why the ... trends now
Government ministers lined up on Sunday morning to lay into Optus over its massive hacking scandal, blasting the company for not doing enough and that saying sorry isn't good enough.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said he was yet to get an explanation why Optus hoarded sensitive personal information of people even after they left the telco.
The data stolen by the hacker came from 10million current or former Optus customers and dated back to 2017.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said Optus hadn't answered the question as to why it was keeping customer information for so long
'I think that companies should not store information forever, as it seems to be the case with Optus keeping the very personal data of customers who had ceased to be customers years ago,' Mr Dreyfus told ABC's Insiders.
'I am yet to hear a reason why that was going on. In particular that's a concern because Optus failed to keep that information safe.'
Mr Dreyfus said companies needed a new mindset when it comes to personal data.
'One of the settings in the Privacy Act is that information that belongs to Australians in only to used for the purpose for which it is collected,' he said.
'If the purpose here was to identify someone whose opening an account or getting a phone from Optus that's the end of it.'
'I have said throughout the week that companies though out Australia should stop regarding all this personal data of Australians as an asset for them, they should actually think of it as a liability.'
Mr Dreyfus has flagged toughening the rules around the length of time companies can keep private data
Mr Dreyfus flagged toughening the rules around data storage.
'This is a wake-up call for corporate Australia and we are going to look very hard at the settings in the Privacy Act,' he said.
'I may be bringing reforms to the Privacy Act before the end of the year to try and both toughen penalties and make companies think harder about why they are storing the personal data of Australians.'
Optus took out a full-page ad in newspapers on Saturday to say it was 'deeply sorry for the data breach' but on Sunday morning two government ministers said it was nowhere near enough.
Optus took out a full page-ad and apologised to its millions of customers whose personal information was stolen in the country's largest ever data breach
Cyber Security and Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil said that Optus had not done enough to alert those most at risk, the 10,200 people who had their details leaked online by the hacker.
'Optus has advised it has told those people - an email is simply not sufficient under these circumstances,' Ms O'Neil told a media conference.
'We are going to need to go through a process of directly speaking to those 10,200 individuals.
'Optus
