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Telstra fault sends distressing phantom call alerts to customers
A Telstra MessageBank fault sent thousands of customers delayed missed-call and voicemail alerts, including alerts apparently from people who had not called. The messages caused confusion and distress, particularly for customers who saw alerts from deceased relatives, and raised fears of a cyber attack.
Telstra said the issue was fixed on Wednesday night and that its systems had not been hacked; it attributed the alerts to a technical fault and launched an investigation. It said Triple Zero calls, voice calls and mobile data were unaffected. The incident follows a nationwide Telstra outage in July that disrupted calls, mobile data and electronic payments for millions of customers.
In short
- A MessageBank fault sent delayed alerts to thousands of Telstra customers.
- Some alerts appeared to come from deceased relatives.
- Telstra says the fault is fixed and services were not hacked.
Explained simply
Telstra is Australia’s largest telecommunications company, providing mobile and landline services. MessageBank is its voicemail service: when someone misses a call, callers can leave a message and the recipient may get an alert.
A delayed or incorrect alert can make it appear that someone called when they did not. That can be upsetting for people who see a notification linked to someone who has died, and can also lead customers to worry about the security of their accounts.
The incident comes after a separate nationwide Telstra outage in July disrupted calls, mobile data and electronic payments. Together, such problems can affect public confidence in the reliability of services many people use to communicate and carry out everyday tasks.
Read the full article at the source →
Originally published by Daily Mail as “Aussie woman shocked to receive a missed call from her dead father”.