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A Sydney man has been charged with attempting to extort Optus customers whose data was compromised, and he might spend the next 10 years behind prison.
Australian Federal Police allege the 19-year-old got customer records from the breach and texted 93 people demanding they hand over $2000 or he would use their data for other crimes.
The Rockdale man is charged with using a telecommunication network with the intent to blackmail and dealing with identification information in an illegal manner.
Police allege the man began his scam last week and continued until he was arrested on Thursday morning, where officers seized a phone linked to the text messages.
No money has been transferred as a result of the scam.
“We understand how worried some members of the community are,” AFP Assistant Commissioner Justine Gough said.
“I want to give the community reassurance the AFP and our partners are working around the clock to help protect your personal information. ”
The man will face Sydney Central Local Court at a later date and faces a lengthy prison sentence if convicted.
“The warning is clear – do not test the capability or dedication of law enforcement,” Gough said.
“Just because there has been one arrest does not mean there won’t be more.”
Mobile phone and internet customers will be better protected from fraud under new regulations to be introduced after the breach.
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Telcos will be able to better coordinate with financial institutions to fight potentially malicious activity if customer details are compromised under plans announced by the federal government.
The amendments would let the companies temporarily share key information such as driver’s licence, Medicare and passport numbers with financial service firms to let them better monitor and safeguard breaches.
Optus would also be able to share identifiers with Commonwealth, state and territory agencies to prevent fraud following the data breach, which left the personal details of millions of customers exposed to hackers.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the move strengthened safeguards in the event of a similar breach.
“What this is all about is to try and reduce the impact of this data breach on Optus customers and to enable financial institutions to implement enhanced safeguards and monitoring,” she told reporters.
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“We take people’s personal information and the protection of that very seriously.”
Rowland said Optus had asked for greater data access to improve their monitoring of fraud.
“We examined this, did proper due diligence and we need to be clear, these regulations are specifically in response to these cyber threats and we know this is on a scale and scope that hasn’t happened in Australia before,” she said.
“We considered it prudent having taken and considered the proper legal advice that the most effective way to enable this data to be shared beyond doubt was through amending these regulations.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the amendments followed close industry consultation and would allow for safer and more secure data sharing.
“They’ve been carefully designed with strong privacy and security safeguards to ensure only limited information can be made available temporarily to prevent and respond to cyber security incidents, fraud, scams and related activities,” he told reporters.
With AAP. (Content has been tweaked for length and style.)
Jaw de Guzman is the content producer for Comms Room, a knowledge platform and website aimed at assisting the communications industry and its professionals.
