An anonymous person claiming to be the hacker behind the massive Optus data breach said the stolen records have now been deleted.

The user ‘Optusdata’ has also removed his original ransom note from a popular hacking forum, which asked for A$1.5 million within seven days.

After allegedly dumping the info of 10,000 customers overnight, and threatening to do so each day for four days until the ransom is paid, it seems the hacker has had a change of heart.

“Too many eyes. We will not sale data to anyone,” the hacker wrote.

“We cant if we even want to: personally deleted data from drive (Only copy) Sorry too 10,200 Australian whos data was leaked.

“Australia will see no gain in fraud, this can be monitored. Maybe for 10,200 Australian but rest of population no. Very sorry to you.

“Deepest apology to Optus for this. Hope all goes well from this. Optus if your [sic] reading we would have reported exploit if you had method to contact. No security mail, no bug bountys, no way too message.

“Ransomware not payed but we dont care any more. Was mistake to scrape publish data in first place.”

The hacker claimed the data stolen include the passport and driver’s license details for 2.8 million Australians, and sensitive records for 11.2 million customers.

Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin (above) defended the way Optus has handled the breach, pointing out this morning, “we are not the villains.”

“We definitely know this is the work of some bad actors, and really they are the villains in this story,” Rosmarin said in an interview this morning

“It’s clearly not as simple as has been written in the press, but what I can say is our customer data is encrypted and there are multiple levels of security.”