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Australian Telco Caught Passing Users' Mobile Numbers to Websites Without Consent

posted by takyon on Thursday June 25 2015, @06:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the convenience-browsing dept.

kaszz writes:

Australian telco Optus has been caught passing its customers' mobile phone numbers to third-party websites without the customers knowledge or consent. The practice, known as HTTP header enrichment, aims to streamline the process of direct billing for customers, but they're not happy. The discovery was made by a user on the telco forum Whirlpool, and Optus confirmed it: "Optus adds our customers' mobile number to the information in select circumstances where we have a commercial relationship with owners of particular websites."

I know this is done in other western countries and abused to run you-watched-porn-now-pay-us scams. There's rumors that the practice is used in Russia too.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by SlimmPickens on Thursday June 25 2015, @07:59AM

    by SlimmPickens (1056) on Thursday June 25 2015, @07:59AM (#200835)

    Optus operates in Australia but is owned by Singtel

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Thursday June 25 2015, @11:18AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Thursday June 25 2015, @11:18AM (#200889) Journal

    Considering that Singtel is from Singapore which monitors their inhabitants extensively. This move by Optus doesn't come as big surprise. Time for some corporate bashing.