Telstra apologizes for ‘breaching trust’ of customers

We’re in the process of communicating to some unlisted customers whose details were incorrectly made available via Directory Assistance or the White Pages. We wanted to explain what has happened and what we’re doing to resolve it.

What’s happened and why
As part of our regulatory obligations Telstra is responsible for providing Directory Assistance services and the White Pages.

We recently discovered an error which resulted in some customers’ names, numbers and addresses being listed when they should not have been. This was a result of a misalignment of databases – no cyber activity was involved.

What we’ve done and what we’re doing
As soon as we became aware, we started work to remove the identified impacted customers from the Directory Assistance service and the online version of the White Pages.

We’re in the process of contacting every affected customer to let them know, and to offer free support through IDCARE.

We are conducting an internal investigation to better understand how it happened and to protect against it happening again.

We’re sorry for breaching your trust
Protecting our customers’ privacy is absolutely paramount, and for the customers impacted we understand this is an unacceptable breach of your trust.

We’re sorry it occurred, and we know we have let you down.
Our customer service has come a long way in recent years, including in truth-telling about our mistakes – it is part of what drives us to make change. We acknowledge that we still get it wrong too often and we simply must do better.

CT Bureau