Optus Admits Using Consumer Drivers Licence Without Approval

Optus has admitted displaying a South Australian man’s driver licence without his permission on its website.

David Green, a writer for ABC’s Mad as Hell program, found a shot of his old driver’s licence – complete with old photo, date of birth and expiry date – was, without his approval, being used by Optus on its website.

Green had posted a picture of his licence in a blog post from 2011 with his address and licence number blacked out but it appears Optus scraped the image from the blog and began using it on its own website. It is unclear how long Green’s licence was on the Optus site.

“Optus has removed this image from our Web site and apologises to Mr Green for the error,” an Optus spokesman said. “While the photo of Mr Green’s licence was publicly available on his blog, Optus acknowledges that we did not seek permission to reproduce the image.”