Australia’s Banking Blunder: 19 Million Customers Lost the Wrongly‑Deleted Tapes
What went wrong? The Commonwealth Bank (CBA) inadvertently wiped out the “heart‑beats” of 19 million customers—names, addresses, account numbers and transaction logs—between 2000 and early 2016.
How the disaster unfolded
- Data lived on two magnetic tapes.
- These tapes were slated for destruction by a third‑party contractor in early 2016.
- The bank never documented this plan, so no trace exists of the tapes afterward.
- When the CBA realised the customer statements were missing, an internal probe found nothing—only that the tapes likely did indeed get destroyed.
Prime Minister’s reaction
Australia’s PM Malcolm Turnbull dubbed the incident “an extraordinary blunder” and quipped that if it had happened today, “the bank would have to advise every single customer.”
Why this matters
- It’s a huge privacy and security nightmare for 19 million Australians.
- It shows how easy it is to lose irreplaceable data when records are stored on fragile media.
- The absence of clear paperwork makes it impossible to recover or even locate the lost tapes.
In short, the Commonwealth Bank’s latest slip‑up reminds us that even the biggest institutions can let a big mistake slip through the cracks—especially when the paperwork never exists in the first place.
