First State Super responds (and they still think they're in the right)

David Heath
Wednesday, 19 October 2011 22:49

Opinion and Analysis

Late this afternoon First State Super made its first public statement on the so-called hacking scandal.  With zero contrition.

A few hours ago, the following statement appeared on the First State Super website.  Allow me to add annotations (the various paragraphs of the statement are italicised for clarity).

Security of member information update

There has recently been some media coverage about unauthorised access to our members' online benefit statements. The statements were in PDF format and were viewed by the person responsible but he did not gain direct access to other account details nor did he conduct any transactions.

"Some?"  Now there's an understatement.  Both the IT and the popular press have been having a field day over this!

You say "did not gain direct access to other account details."  I assume this means that the researcher had to read them off the PDF and copy them elsewhere in order to qualify as "not direct access," because surely many private details would have been included on these statements.

Of course he didn't conduct any transactions - even if he could, he wouldn't have been that stupid (even if he did access 568 PDFs - somewhat excessive, I might suggest).

Only 568 member statements were viewed out of a total membership of some 770,000. The members whose statements were viewed have been notified.

This contradicts with earlier statements which insisted that all members had been advised and was only corrected when a large number of members contacted First State Super and also wrote comments to various press articles saying that they had received no such notification.

The message continues...