Telkomsel Website Hacked, Pricing Rant Goes Viral

Telkomsel, the country’s largest telecommunications provider, was the target of hackers on April 28 when its website was seized over complaints of high pricing for data plans.

Telkomsel’s homepage was defaced with profanity, while the tags and content titles were changed. The provider, which boasts over 122 million users, currently offers internet packages with several components including basic 3G and 4G data and streaming data for both video and music.

Customers have often complained that lumping entertainment access into the same package as internet access has driven up prices with few users utilizing the streaming data. Users have demanded a higher data quota for the same price.

The hack found widespread support among netizens, particularly on Twitter, where other Telkomsel users agreed prices are too high.

“I agree that it is too expensive. We only get 8 GB for Rp.200,000 ( US$15), that kind of quota is not sufficient,” posted Twitter user @Getatatu.

Telkomsel Vice President of Corporate Communication Adita Irawati apologized for any inconvenience to customers and said the telco is investigating the incident.

Competitor Indosat was also hacked after tweeting a joke about Telkomsel’s expensive quotas, with subdomain arena.indosatooredo.com briefly replaced with a message calling on service providers to be on friendlier terms with each other.

Both the Telkomsel and Indosat websites have been fully restored.