as a word of warning - i got phished on my mobile phone a couple of days ago someone from "optus" called. this is not unusual for me as they have called in the past. there was some complication in details and they needed to confirm some stuff. they knew some information that only optus or myself would know. after confirming the details of - my name, dob and address i suddenly cut the phone call short realising that this person had given no reasonable id. i requested a telephone number and name. the number yielded an optus call centre. finally afer around 35 minutes i finally managed to get some sort of answer out of optus as to whether they called me in any way. optus was pretty sure that no one from optus had called, they were unwillng to check into fraud being carried out in their name using info they would know. the up shot of it is this 1 someone is ringing people up claiming to be "optus" 2 they know information that optus and myself would know 3 whilst not getting to the stage of asking for passwords etc they are gaining info like your name address and dob. 4 this kind of information whilst not critical to id theft is info that is helpful to gaining other info - baby steps. 5 optus has no protocol with dealing with this situation and obviously has some leaky privacy practices. they have no body within their organisation that deals with this kind of event. 6 if "optus" rings you up - give no information to them and request a number from them. do not do business with them if they call as it is impossible for you to know whether they are optus 7 it is probable that other people are being phished without their realisation. 8 i was lucky enough to realise quickly enough that i was being phished. 9 optus is not overly concerned about these kinds of events as they have no way to manage such events which explains alot. anyway good luck
