With another year of technology news now behind us, it’s time to look back at Information Age’s most popular stories of 2025 — as read by you.
Below is our annual list of Information Age’s most-read stories over the past year, covering everything from data breaches to tech job losses, price rises, and what happens when AI turns out not to be AI.
Now, without further ado …
Information Age’s 12 top stories of 2025:
12. Australians' banking passwords stolen by malware
Back in April, an Australian cybersecurity company revealed at least 30,000 Australian banking passwords had been exposed between 2021 and 2025 after hackers infected devices with infostealer malware.
Around the same time, American telecommunications giant Verizon said it had already witnessed a “significant jump” in malware-driven data breaches in the Asia-Pacific region in early 2025.
11. Tech workers face job cuts at ANZ, NAB, Bendigo Bank
Three major Australian banks announced significant job cuts in early September, as ANZ, NAB, and Bendigo Bank revealed restructures involving their technology divisions.
ANZ said the cuts had “nothing to do with AI”, while NAB said some of its roles would move overseas.
Bendigo Bank also got itself into some hot water over the amount of notice it gave to 145 technology workers who were to lose their jobs.
10. Telstra, Infosys deal cedes control of 650 Australian workers
Australia’s largest telco, Telstra, announced in August that it would begin a joint venture with IT and consulting giant Infosys, giving the Indian company a controlling 75 per cent stake in Telstra’s services arm Versent Group.
The move was widely seen as another way Telstra could bolster its increasing focus on AI, but it also put hundreds of IT jobs at risk of being outsourced overseas.
9. ‘Shameful’ CBA hiring Indian ICT workers after firing Australians
Speaking of outsourcing — the Finance Sector Union (FSU) was furious with the Commonwealth Bank in July for advertising software engineering jobs in India after it had made many of the roles redundant in Australia just months earlier.
“By hiring for the same job, at their own Indian subsidiary, they’re showing themselves to have breached the Enterprise Agreement and essentially lied to their workers,” a union representative said at the time.
Commonwealth Bank faced criticism in 2025 for moving some of its IT roles from Australia to India. Image: Shutterstock
8. Australians to face age checks from search engines
At the end of June, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner quietly registered a new online safety code which declared search engines operating in Australia would need to check the ages of logged-in users by mid-2026.
The code was co-developed by technology companies, who won't need to implement age assurance measures for users who are not logged in — but will need to blur explicit images.
7. Centrelink trials AI to detect fraud, prioritise debts
Early in the year, Services Australia told Information Age that AI models it had begun testing in 2024 had not yet been deployed into its usual business processes.
But welfare rights advocates called for the agency, which administers Centrelink, to release audits of the systems’ accuracy and details of any bias risks.
Services Australia had trialled AI systems to predict fraudulent welfare claims and to suggest which debts it should priortise recovering.
6. Software dev accidentally leaks Australian govt documents
This awkward tale caught the attention of our readers after Australia’s privacy commissioner confirmed a third-party software developer working on a federal government agency’s website accidentally caused private documents to become public.
It came as the commissioner said the outsourcing of IT work to third parties had been “a factor in an increasing number of Notifiable Data Breaches”.
5. Westpac stands firm on office mandate after WFH ruling
After Westpac was ordered by the Fair Work Commission in October to allow an employee to work from home permanently, the big bank defended its return-to-office policy and described it as having the “right balance”.
Westpac CEO Anthony Miller publicly backed the bank’s policy of mandating two or three days per week in the office for employees, but the Finance Sector Union argued Westpac “wouldn’t have just lost a landmark decision” if its return-to-office policy had been fair.
Search engines will need to check the age of logged-in Australian users by mid-2026. Image: Shutterstock
4. Origin Energy confirms data breach involving credit cards
In October, major Australian electricity, gas, and internet provider Origin Energy exclusively confirmed to Information Age that payment details of more than 700 customers had allegedly been stolen by an employee.
The worker had supposedly tried to email stolen credit card details to their personal email address when they were terminated by the company in July.
Origin told affected customers that while the stolen data had been encrypted and an internal investigation had “found no evidence that this file was accessed or further shared outside of Origin”, it could not guarantee their payment details were safe.
3. Aussies push back against Microsoft 365 price hikes
The year did not get off to a great start for Microsoft, as Australian subscribers of its Microsoft 365 software bundles realised that while the tech giant was hiking prices as it introduced more AI features, it had not informed them they could stay on their cheaper existing plans.
Some users noticed they were only offered to remain on their cheaper plans if they tried to cancel their subscriptions, so they informed others about the trick — and vented their frustrations about Microsoft — on social media.
Microsoft was soon investigated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which sued the company in October.
The tech giant later said it would refund customers and admitted its actions “fell short of our standards”, but that did not stop the multinational from announcing further price rises for its business, enterprise, and government users of Microsoft 365.
2. Apple raises iPhone 17 Pro, Pro Max prices in Australia
When Apple announced its latest iPhone models during its annual September event, it also raised the starting prices of its more premium Pro and Pro Max models.
This wasn’t good news for Australian customers, as the starting prices for both the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max rose more than they did in the United States.
Apple also used the event to reveal its long-rumoured new model the iPhone Air, which we described in our review as costing more than the base iPhone 17, but offering less.
1. The company whose ‘AI’ was actually 700 humans in India
This story raced away to become our most-read piece this year, thanks to its gripping tale of a UK-based company whose app-building ‘AI’ chatbot named Natasha turned out to be “a team of 700 very human Indian developers who were not only writing customers’ software, but tasked with behaving like bots”.
Will we see more AI-washing in 2026?
Of course we will.
