![]() If you have been the victim of fraud or identity theft as a result of this breach or any others, you can contact IDCare for additional aid and Cyber Report to report the crime.Western Australian building services, electrical, gasfitting and plumbing industries.įind out about the functions and jurisdiction of Building and Energy. The advice we provided in our previous article applies to these.Īdditionally, anyone with reason to be concerned about physical safety if their location is known (for example domestic abuse survivors) should consider the possibility that their names, telephone numbers and address may have leaked or may in the future. Other possible uses involve activities like attempting to take over valuable online accounts or your SIM card, or setting up new financial services and SIM cards in your name. The scams involved with these data will only grow in the coming days and weeks and may not be confined to the digital world. Anyone receiving this kind of text message should make every effort to contact their family member or friend by other means. This involves scammers posing as a family member or friend from a new phone number, often using WhatsApp, in need of urgent financial help. The data could also be used to identify family members to make the “ Hi Mum” or family impersonation scam more convincing. Anyone who claims to be able to scrub the data from the dark web is claiming to put toothpaste back in the tube. Instead of helping, they steal money or obtain more information from the victim. Paying anyone who makes these claims will not increase the security of your information.ĭata recovery scams – where scammers target victims offering help to remove their data from the dark web or recover any money lost for a fee – have also become prominent. The data have already leaked and claims about deleting the data are untrue. There are reports blackmailers are already targeting breach victims via text message, claiming to have the data and threatening to post it on the dark web unless the victim pays. The least technically sophisticated method of targeting Optus customers is to use the details to make direct contact and ask for a ransom. Are the released data already being used? The best course of action in this case is to assume your data may have been released until Optus notifies people in the coming week. Troy Hunt, the Australian cyber security professional who maintains HaveIBeenPwned – a website you can use to check whether your data are part of a known breach – has announced he will not add the leaked data to the site at this stage. Reports of people being contacted by scammers suggest they are already being used. Can I find out whether my data were part of the 10,200 leaked records? However it is unclear at this early stage whether free options to change these documents will be made to all data breach victims, or only a subset of victims. What does the Optus data breach mean for you and how can you protect yourself? A step-by-step guideĪn extra measure offered recently is changing your driver’s license number, ordering a new passport and Medicare card. These actions are good cyber hygiene practices no matter the circumstances. Whatever the motivations of the person claiming to be the hacker, their actions suggest we should continue to expect all records stolen from Optus do remain in malicious hands.ĭespite the developments, recommendations still stand – you should still be taking proactive action to protect yourself. There is also no guarantee the data were not already sold to a third party. It is likely a copy still remains, and it’s even possible the post is a ploy to convince victims not to worry about their security – to increase the likelihood of successful attacks using the data. We have to ask: what would the hacker gain from claiming to delete them? Unfortunately, while the purported hacker did appear to possess the legitimate data, there is no way to verify the deletion. The question then is – why would the hacker express remorse and claim to delete the data? The data they released are now easily available and appear to be legitimate data stolen from Optus (their legitimacy has not been verified by Optus or the Australian Federal Police the FBI in the United States has now been called in to help the investigation).
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