Telstra publicised the personal details of more than 140,000 Australians against their wishes, some of whom even had names and addresses put on the White Pages, a shocking investigation has revealed.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said on Tuesday that Telstra’s licence obligations were breached 163,000 times between 2021 and 2022 over publishing unlisted numbers.

ACMA consumer lead Samantha Yorke said “privacy and safety” had been put “at risk”, with Telstra publishing 24,005 numbers in the White Pages – complete with the names and address of customers.

A further 139,000 unlisted numbers were published in Telstra’s directory assistance database (used by workers in its call centres).

Yorke said the regulator wasn’t aware of any harm to people as a result of the breaches, but that the failures were still “serious”.

“Telstra failing to safeguard customer information, putting people’s privacy and safety at risk, is a serious matter,” Yorke said.

“Telstra is entrusted with personal details of millions of Australians and those people have the right to expect that Telstra has robust systems and processes in place to ensure their information is being protected.”

The scandal is just the latest run-in with the telco regulator for Telstra, which has been handed millions in fines for various wrongdoing in recent years, including failures on safety and privacy.

Telstra was fined $2.5 million in 2021 for failures that resulted in 50,000 unlisted numbers being uploaded to public databases.

More recently, the telco giant was fined $300,000 in November over failing to provide accurate information to a database used by emergency services, including Triple Zero.

News of the investigation also comes less than a day after Telstra unveiled a range of price hikes on its post-paid mobile plans, with some of the increases coming out before the inflation rate.

Customers will be paying between $2 to $4 more each month under the changes, with basic plans rising from $62 to $65 per month.

Remediation program

After the latest failure to safeguard customer data, ACMA said on Tuesday Telstra will be required to reconcile its entire customer database with the White Pages every six months.

It will also implement a training program for staff and have its systems externally audited.

But there will be no fine unless Telstra breaches ACMA’s latest direction and cleans up its act.

ACMA said Telstra initially self-reported the wrongdoing after discovering the details had been published itself, appearing to blame “system issues and process failures”, the regulator said.

A Telstra spokesperson says the company has remediated affected customers and updated its systems.

“We found this issue in 2022, immediately reported our findings to the ACMA, took corrective action and communicated with customers,” Telstra’s spokesperson said.

“Since it occurred, we have significantly upgraded our systems through major software and technology improvements and we conduct regular sweeps to pick up any potential misalignments.”