In a move that is bound to restore faith in the company, Optus hopes that its latest congratulatory email finds you well. They have retrieved your stolen data but sadly it’s not that simple!
The email, from the company’s Prince, goes on to explain that they are “ready and willing” to send you your stolen data but the Prince of Optus will incur certain unavoidable costs in the transaction. Accordingly, a one-off fee of $5k to be sent via Western Union will apply. Then you get your data back.
We spoke to an Optus customer who has been fretting about the breach for a few days. They told The Times,
“Yeah, identity theft is a big deal and these hackers seem to have got it all from Optus’ state-of-the-art open source API systems or whatever. I’m glad the Prince personally reached out to me. $5K is a bit steep but how much could the hackers get if I miss this opportunity?”
A spokesperson for the Royal Prince of the Sovereign Corporation of Optus Blessed Above All Companies (full title) told The Times,
“The Prince just wants to help. He made sure the email contained a bunch of different fonts and font sizes to catch the attention of the customers. You’d be shocked at how many of these emails go unresponded”
However, some are sceptical of the email and have decided not to respond straight away. We spoke to Sam who told The Times,
“I’ve seen Mr. Robot, I know a thing or two about hackers and scammers. I’d never use Western Union. Instead, I’ll make some enquiries about whether the good Prince will accept cryptocurrency like Monero. Nothing seedy about that”
In the interim, we believe Optus has taken steps to renew their McAfee subsicrption after the free trial lapsed back in 2019.
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