“An ad is not a strategy”: Federal government fury at Optus’s apology in weekend newspaper

Home affairs minister Clare O’Neil. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

Negative sentiment about Optus is up by a quarter in the wake of its massive data breach, as the federal government says efforts to right the wrong are falling woefully short in the harshest rebuke yet for the besieged telco.

A media intelligence and analytics company called Meltwater crunched the data across global news and social media in Australia and beyond to take the temperature since the September 22 hack.

It found Optus was mentioned 133,000 times, which is 524% more than the fortnight before, and experienced a 25% uptick in negative media bringing it to a whopping 33% of all chatter.

It was five times’ higher than Optus’s typical numbers, researchers found, which usually sit at around 8% negative sentiment. On the flip side, Optus’s positive sentiment is usually around 18% — it’s less than a third of that now, a paltry 5%.

So who’s talking about it? Meltwater found it’s mostly men (61.5%) and mostly Victorians, accounting for 7000 of all mentions, who are predominantly using Twitter to share anger, frustration and concern.

It comes as Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has urged the 10,200 Optus customers whose personal records were published online last week to cancel their driver’s licences and passports immediately.

“We should not be in the position that we’re in, but Optus has put us here,” O’Neil said yesterday.

“It’s really important now that Australians take as many precautions as they can to protect themselves against financial crime.

“If you been told you are the subject of that particular part of the breach, you should proceed immediately to cancel relevant identification cards, to cancel your passport and do whatever else is needed to make sure you are getting fresh identity documents.”

More than 10 million customers were caught up in the hack — 40% of the country’s population — while 2.8 million had their passport, Medicare and licence numbers stolen by an alleged hacker who requested, and then retracted, a $1 million ransom figure.

O’Neil continued that Optus emailing the affected customers fell short of what was needed, “and we will need to go to a process of directly speaking to those people and Optus needs to take up the mantle to ensure that people are aware that they are at risk”.

Optus took out a full-page ad in Australia’s major newspapers on Saturday to apologise for the attack and to encourage people to visit the website to learn more about suitable steps to protect themselves, including renewing identity documents.

“We’re deeply sorry that a cyberattack has happened on our watch,” Optus said in the notice.

“We know this is devastating and that we’ll need to work hard to regain your trust.”

But Government Services Minister Bill Shorten says that was not good enough, revealing the telco had failed to provide information to the government about customers whose Medicare numbers were exposed.

“I acknowledge [Optus] had a full-page newspaper ad in the paper on the weekend, but an ad is not a strategy. That is not a plan,” he said.

“We call upon Optus to understand that this breach has introduced systemic problems for 10 million Australians in terms of their personal identification.

“We know that Optus is trying to do what it can, but having said that, it’s not enough. It’s now a matter of protecting Australians’ privacy from criminals.”

The Australian Federal Police confirmed it has launched an operation to bolster the cybersecurity of the 10,000 affected customers, though declined to comment on the search for the alleged hacker behind the attack.

However, O’Neil described the search as “progressing well”, adding that she was frustrated by Coalition-era critical infrastructure legislation that had left the government’s hands mostly tied in the wake of the cyberattack.

“I can tell you that those laws were absolutely useless to me when the Optus matter came on foot,” she said.

“I simply know that we do not have the right laws in the country to manage cybersecurity emergency incidents and this is something we will need to look at.”

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