Queensland Transport and Main Roads (TMR) branches have experienced their busiest day on record after the latest round of communications from Optus about its massive data breach.
On October 9 and 10, thousands of customers heard for the first time since the data breach that their driver's licence number had been exposed.
On October 11, TMR branches recorded 23,791 customer visits in the state, the most since records began.
About half of those were in the south-east Queensland region.
Optus advised up to 9.8 million Australians had their personal information exposed in a data breach and TMR understood that could include as many as 664,000 Queenslanders.
However, there have been just 85,975 requests for new licence numbers, though that was a significant increase on the 30 licence number change requests usually processed per week at TMR sites.
A TMR spokeswoman said the state's busiest customer service centres were Sherwood, Burleigh Waters, Ipswich, Greenslopes, Bundall and Cannon Park.
Trransport Minister Mark Bailey said his department was working as quickly as possible to help Queenslanders who had their licence number exposed in the Optus cyber attack.
"There's no doubt this is putting strain on our system, and I thank staff for continuing to process these requests so quickly," he said.
TMR also confirmed additional staff were added to resource the customer service centres and the speciality team who undertook biometric checks.
A 19-year-old Sydney man was arrested on October 6 as part of Operation Guardian — the Australian Federal Police (AFP) investigation set up after 10,200 customer records were published online after the Optus cyber attack.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has launched an investigation into the company's handling of customers' data.
TMR Customer Data (total customers as at 3:30pm)* | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Region |
Central |
Northern |
Southern |
SEQ North |
SEQ South |
Statewide |
% change statewide (Based on 8 weeks prior) |
10/10/2022 |
1762 |
2150 |
3058 |
3876 |
6681 |
17527 |
38% |
11/10/2022 |
2297 |
2686 |
3622 |
4423 |
10763 |
23791 |
101% |
12/10/2022 |
1825 |
2392 |
2932 |
3650 |
8183 |
18982 |
74% |
13/10/2022 |
1656 |
2432 |
2842 |
3761 |
8256 |
18947 |
63% |
14/10/2022 |
1978 |
2564 |
3141 |
4252 |
8251 |
20186 |
59% |
17/10/2022 |
1681 |
2194 |
2749 |
4077 |
7045 |
17746 |
40% |
18/10/2022 |
1374 |
1801 |
2472 |
3703 |
5883 |
15233 |
29% |
*Total customers only includes customers that have received a ticket or been recorded through QFlow, it does not count customers who are served without a ticket.
