In 2019, Georgia realised $7,000 was missing from her bank account.
She rang her bank immediately and spent hours on the phone, trying to understand what had happened to her money.
Eventually, they figured out that a woman had visited one of the bank’s branches with a copy of Georgia’s drivers licence and Medicare card.
The woman, who was pretending to be Georgia, had told bank staff she was facing a crisis and needed to access the money in Georgia’s account.
“They knew my account number, they knew enough that they [the bank] just handed the money over to them. I guess that’s human error at its finest,” Georgia said.
She now knows that her personal data was stolen from her real estate agent.
But for the past three years, the issues stemming from the theft of Georgia’s identity have continued.
“I’ve had multiple bank accounts opened in my name … I’ve had two debts from buy now, pay later accounts and actually had debt collectors sent after me for those, I had a fraudulent tax claim made,” Georgia said.
Now, Georgia is one of almost 10 million people caught up in the Optus data breach.
She said she wasn’t surprised when the company informed her that her data may have been compromised.
“I knew it was coming … but yeah it comes through and you’re like ‘great, here it goes again’,” she said.
‘No real requirement’ for companies to delete data
The Optus data breach included the names,…
