Maurice Blackburn principal lawyer Elizabeth O’Shea said the firm had lodged a complaint with the OAIC. (Source: Maurice Blackburn/AAP)
A fresh bid has been launched to seek compensation on behalf of the millions of Qantas customers whose data was exposed in a major data breach. Nearly six million customers had their personal information compromised by the breach on June 30.
Maurice Blackburn has lodged a complaint with the Office of the Australian Commissioner (OAIC) on behalf of impacted individuals. It alleges that Qantas failed to take reasonable steps to protect personal information.
The Qantas hack occurred in Manila at one of the airline’s call centres, with a cyber criminal gaining access to a third party customer servicing platform. The data of 5.7 million customers was on that system.
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Maurice Blackburn principal lawyer Elizabeth O’Shea said the official complaint was lodged late yesterday with the OAIC, the authority charged with taking action over breaches of the Privacy Act.
“While we await a response and potential action from the OAIC in relation to Qantas failing to adequately protect the personal information of its customers, we would encourage Qantas customers who were impacted by the breach to register with us to receive updates about the representative complaint and compensation which may be sought on your behalf,” she said.
“It is early days in what we are learning about the mass data breach, but if you’re one of the millions of people that have had your personal information compromised, you’re eligible to register with us and we will keep you informed as the matter progresses.”
O’Shea noted that registration was free and non-binding.
It comes as Qantas obtained an interim injunction in the NSW Supreme Court to try and stop the publication of the stolen data.
“We want to do all we can to protect our customers’ personal information and believe this was an important next course of action,” Qantas said in a statement.
There is no evidence that any personal data stolen from Qantas has been released, but Qantas said it was actively monitoring the situation with the support of cyber security experts.
The injunction means that in the event cyber criminals do post details on the dark web, others won’t be able to repost or publish the details.
Qantas previously revealed that of the 5.7 million customers impacted by the breach, 4 million customers had their name, email and frequent flyer details impacted.
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Of the remaining 1.7 million, about 1.3 million had residential and business addresses, 1.1 million had date of birth, 900,000 had phone numbers, 400,000 their gender, and 10,000 their meal preferences impacted.
No credit card details, personal financial information or passport details were stored in the system.
Customers have been advised to remain vigilant to scams and report them to Scamwatch.
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