Computer containing deets of 1 million bank customers sold on eBay
£35 for account numbers, phone numbers and even signatures
26 August 2008 12:59 GMT / By Katie Scott
Well it wasn't the Government this time, but yet again a data loss scandal has hit the headlines.
This time, an unsuspecting IT manager, had found details for one million bank customers on the hard drive of a computer he bought on eBay for just £35.
Andrew Chapman from Oxford found information including the bank account numbers, phone numbers, mothers' maiden names and signatures of one million customers of American Express, NatWest and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
It came from a data processing company Mail Source, which stores financial information for organisations, and, according to a report in the Daily Mail, had originally been used at the firm's archive centre in Shoeburyness, Essex.
Mail Source insists that the employee who sold the computer made an "honest mistake" and the sale is "an isolated incident".
"We know which employee took the server and sold it, but we believe it was an honest mistake and it was not intentional to sell it without the server being cleared", a spokeswoman said, adding: "This is a very unfortunate incident and we are taking measures to ensure it will never happen again."
An RBS spokeswoman told the newspaper in response: "Graphic Data has confirmed to us that one of their machines appears to have been inappropriately sold on via a third party".
"As a result, historical data relating to credit card applications from some of our customers and data from other banks were not removed."
"We take this issue extremely seriously and are working to resolve this regrettable loss with Graphic Data as a matter of urgency."
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