I just had a lovely (it was not lovely) experience talking with Telstra about how they knowingly violate privacy when their computers link accounts together. Here’s how you can enjoy this, too:
- Buy a new iPad SIM card (the $30 with 3GB of bonus data works nicely).
- Activate it online, providing Telstra with your name and an email address (we’ll call this Email A).
- Receive an “Activation in progress” email from Telstra, to Email A.
- A little time later, receive an “Activation Complete” email from Telstra, to Email B – Email B is an address that either belongs to someone else entirely, or an old/inactive Telstra account that belongs to you.
- Observe how Telstra have matched one (new) account to another (old, or belonging to someone else) account based on nothing more than your name.
I assume you could then use this new association between the accounts to then reset the password on the old/belonging to someone else account.
Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison 