Passport details of Australians travelling to Bali exposed in e-visa glitch

Some Australians travelling to Bali are having their personal identity leaked, due to a glitch in Indonesia’s e-visa system.

Transcript

00:00It's not clear how many people have been affected by this glitch, potentially it could be thousands.

00:08The ABC has heard from three Australians who separately travelled to Bali in the past few

00:14months.

00:15They all had the same problem.

00:16On their electronic visa document issued by Indonesia's government was a QR code.

00:22When they scanned it, it brought up the passport details of complete strangers.

00:27Their full name, date of birth, their passport number, their photo.

00:31One traveller was presented with those details of a four-year-old boy from Perth.

00:36Others had the details of travellers from India and China.

00:41Now Indonesia's immigration department has confirmed to the ABC that it is aware of this

00:46problem and has been for some time.

00:49A spokesman said that every day they receive tens of thousands of electronic visa applications.

00:56He described this glitch as an anomaly and he said that they are working to fix it.

01:02But a cyber security expert here told us that these sorts of problems around data privacy

01:09are far too common here in Indonesia.

01:13Australia's embassy in Jakarta has been in contact with the Director-General of Immigration

01:19to raise this issue and one of the affected Australians who alerted the embassy, she was

01:27told that the Australian side has raised strong concerns to their Indonesian counterparts

01:33about keeping the data of Australians who travel here secure.