Aussie Discovers Optus Plastered His Driver’s Licence All Over Its Site

Aussie Discovers Optus Plastered His Driver’s Licence All Over Its Site

A man has taken to Twitter after discovering telco giant, Optus, had used his driver’s licence as an example for their sign-up verification form.

The South Australian show writer David Green tweeted to Optus after discovering his expired South Australian driver’s licence was being used on its site.

Green had uploaded the licence to his blog in a 2011 after he’d moved to a different state. Side by side, it appears Optus had only added a red circle to indicate where the licence number was found on the card. While the image he uploaded blocked out his licence number and home address, Optus made no attempt to block his name, image and date of birth.

Green has told Gizmodo Australia in an email that he found out about it through a friend who was signing up for an Optus account.

“I’m guessing a some point between 2011 and 2019, someone working on the Optus website has done a search for drivers’ licences in Google and decided to use mine for their website, without asking, and even though there are lots of dummy example ones that would have been more appropriate,” Green said.

“I scanned the old one for nostalgic purposes, blacked out my address and the ID number and put it on my blog [but] my name, birth date, and face were still visible.”

Green said he was told by Optus it was investigating how it happened and how long the image was up for. It’s now been removed from the site.

“Optus has removed this image from our website and apologises to Mr Green for the error,” an Optus spokesperson told Gizmodo Australia.

“While the photo of Mr Green’s licence was publicly available on his blog, Optus acknowledges that we did not seek permission to reproduce the image. We have also contacted Mr Green directly.”

We’ve reached out to The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to confirm what Australians should do if similar occurrences happen to them.

[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2019/12/optus-nbn-fine-accc/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/optus-410×231.jpg” title=”Optus Slapped With $6.4M Fine For Dodgy NBN Emails Minutes After Announcing New Charity Initiative” excerpt=”The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has ordered Optus to pay a $6.4 million fine for misleading customers to believe their home broadband was about to be cut off. The announcement came minutes after the telco announced a new initiative to donate data to young Australians living in poverty.”]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.