As millions of Optus customers scramble to change passports and licences, Madonna King pens a letter to its CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin.
Dear Kelly,
I hope you get to read this because ironically, while millions of your customers have had their private details exposed, your details seem more difficult to track down.
My problem is not so much the hack, because I know bad things can happen to good people, but with the way you continue to handle one of the biggest stuff-ups in my lifetime.
I liked your teary press conference. We should have more of them. It showed a real empathy, in my humble view.
But that support dissipated quickly when I saw that you then took the weekend off, and went walking at your country home.
Of course you deserve a break, but optics are so important here. You know what I was doing then, as you strolled the countryside?
I was on hold.
And I’ve spent a lot of time, with a phone to my ear since then, trying to find out simple things – like whether I have been hacked, or why my husband received a letter saying he might have been exposed as a ‘former’ customer.
Certainly the bill we received this week would suggest we are still very much current.
I know that because we have a contract: You provide a service, and we pay a monthly bill. But have you supplied that service, really?
Now I’m wondering whether I have to pay your bill. Really.
And what’s this message I received at the height of this drama about having reached 50 per cent of my data allowance – but that I shouldn’t worry because if I reached 100 per cent, you’d simply give me an extra gigabyte for $10?
You know how I’m using that data, don’t you? I’m trying to find out who in what country might be trawling through my private information and how I might put a stop to that.
One thing as a journalist I’ve grown to despise in public office is the opaqueness that covers the policies that affect people.
We see it in politics every day. It’s prompted royal commissions and inquiries in almost every state and territory.
This is our information, not yours, and we deserve to be told the truth and not treated like a teacher might address a year 3 student who hadn’t done their homework.
This is your homework, not ours.
So don’t tell us you are working with organisations on our behalf. What are you doing with what organisations and how have they responded?
Or that we would understand the unfolding situation better if we were privy to some of the information being provided in top-level briefings.
What briefings? And if we aren’t allowed to know what is going on, why hold a media conference to tell us what we aren’t allowed to know?
My demands are simple. Of course I’d like to know how this happened and how close we might be to finding out who is responsible – but right now I’ll settle for this:
- Have I been hacked? (Because your correspondence by message, email and letter is just conflicting)
- If so, what has been hacked?
- And what do we need to do about it?
And how about I hold off paying this month’s bill, until you give me that information?
There’s one other issue I’d like to raise. A federal government review of identity theft, by the Home Affairs Department in 2019, said that on average, an Australian who had their personal information stolen spent about 23 hours responding.
Sometimes that meant dealing with up to 37 different government and private organisations.
My hours are climbing, and I haven’t even considered joining the kilometre-long queue to apply for a new driver’s licence. That’s because I don’t know if I need to.
You’ll get my bill for the time I’ve spent on hold and in queues, in due course. I’m still working out my hourly rate.
But would you mind forwarding me your address so that I can pass it on? I suspect you already have everything you need to know about me.
Sincerely,
Madonna King
