Telecom breach hits hard

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The scale of a Telecom security breach is becoming apparent with hundreds of thousands of customers at risk of having had their personal details searched.

Sales staff working for commercial rival Slingshot have told the Herald on Sunday they would use Telecom's Wireline database more than a thousand times on some days. The purpose of the searches was to find out personal account details of Telecom customers who would then be offered a better deal by Slingshot.

Telecom is days away from making an announcement after the massive breach of security was exposed.

Telecom Retail chief executive Alan Gourdie has refused to rule out contacting police over the breach. He said in a statement it was "an extremely serious matter".

Gourdie said the investigation was split into "the alleged fraudulent access of our data by a competitor" and a review of the security of the Wireline database. The use of the Telecom database was by Power Marketing Limited, a telemarketing firm.