Personal data of a million bank customers found on computer sold on eBay for £35
Personal details of more than a million bank customers have been found on a computer sold on eBay. Highly sensitive information on American Express, NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland customers was stored on the machine's hard drive.
'The banking information was being held by the archiving firm Graphic Data, which copies paperwork from some of Britain's biggest financial organisations, then stores it digitally.
It was on a computer previously used at the company's archive in Shoeburyness, Essex.
A former employee sold it on eBay for just £35.88 earlier this month. Crucially, he did so without first erasing the internal hard drive.
It was only when buyer Andrew Chapman started looking at the hard disk that its astonishing contents came to light.
Mr Chapman, a 56-year-old IT manager from Oxford, said: 'I couldn't believe it. In front of me was reams of extremely confidential information about thousands and thousands of people.'
Some of the data first belonged to NatWest and includes thousands of applications for credit cards.
They have the applicant's name, address, date of birth, email address, bank account number, sort code, mothers' maiden name, card number and signature.
There are also 1,314 credit card balance transfer requests received by American Express.
Each contains the customer's name, address and signature and the numbers of the cards. Information from RBS included yet more card applications and credit checks.
The Information Commissioner's Office said it would investigate urgently.
Graphic Data said: 'Certain pieces of IT equipment have been removed from a secure area. We are seeking to recover this equipment, which apparently contained customer data.
'We take customer privacy and data security very seriously.'
A spokesman for NatWest/RBS said: 'RBS and NatWest take data protection extremely seriously and have very strict procedures to ensure the security of information at all times.
'Any breach of these procedures is totally unacceptable and is investigated as a matter of urgency.'
American Express said it was 'looking into it'.
The scandal is the latest in a series of high-profile data security breaches.
Just last week the Home Office admitted one of its contractors had lost a computer memory stick holding the details of 127,000 criminals.
The blunders have increased public distrust of the authorities' ability to keep their personal information secret - and increased opposition to the proposed national identity card scheme.
Reproduced from an article published by The Daily Mail
© The Daily Mail
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