We know Albanese is a loyal Qantas Frequent Flyer member [0], so this may be related to the recent Qantas breach -
“ Hackers release Qantas customers' data on dark web. The stolen data included some customers' names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, and frequent flyer numbers.“ [1]
A crestfallen Anthony Albanese says he hasn’t received a single phone call, text, or even a cheeky meme, after his personal phone number was leaked online this week.
“I honestly thought I’d be inundated,” the PM said at a press conference today, staring at his phone’s empty notifications screen. “Not even a scam text pretending to be Australia Post”.
Albanese said he’d even logged into a website that requires two factor identification, just so he would receive at least one text message. “But they ended up sending me a code to my email address instead. My phone’s still empty”.
I feel the fundamental problem is the idea of phone number being secret or private in the first place. It is just very weak form of access control, I believe we can do much better these days.
Exactly why should not every elected person's full details including phone number and address be publicly available? If they are doing nothing bad they have nothing to fear from electorate. Honest man has nothing to fear as proverb say.
And allowing direct communication would increase transparency and improve how well democracy can work.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 28.1 ms ] thread“ Hackers release Qantas customers' data on dark web. The stolen data included some customers' names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, and frequent flyer numbers.“ [1]
0: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/28/anthony-alb...
1:https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-11/hackers-release-qanta...
~ https://theshovel.com.au/2025/10/14/albo-yet-to-receive-sing...
Remember the phrase "metadata isn't data"?
If it's your metadata, collection and storage is mandated. If it's their metadata, they send in the police to put a stop to it.
>The Australian Federal Police is formally seeking to get the prime minister's number removed.
How about getting the Prime Minister a new phone number instead?
And allowing direct communication would increase transparency and improve how well democracy can work.
I wondered if the ABC would acknowledge who broke this story. (Latouffe sued the ABC earlier this year for wrongful dismissal and won.)
They didn't link to her new media company though or the original story (other news sites did).
https://www.ettemedia.com/exclusive-personal-phone-number-of...
As an Australian living in Australia, this reads as:
“We became so enraged that we formed a committee. We will be asking the government to let us nicely ask the criminals to nicely take down his number.”
The innocence is charming :)