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Banks Facing Investigation Over Data Found on Laptop
Wed, 27 Aug 2008
A number of banks and credit card lenders are set to be investigated following the discovery of one million customers’ bank details on a laptop . IT manager, Andrew Chapman, was shocked to discover that a laptop he had purchased for £35 on eBay contained the bank account numbers, sort codes, credit card numbers, names, addresses, mobile phone numbers and the signatures of around a million customers. The laptop was purchased from a former employee of Graphic Data – a company who are responsible for archiving records for some of the UK’s biggest financial institutions.

American Express, Natwest and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) are amongst the major financial organisations to be investigated, with RBS and its subsidiary, Natwest, claiming to be investigating matters urgently. The investigation is set to be conducted by the Information Commissioner’s Office, at a time when confidential data has been discovered in the public domain on a worryingly frequent basis.

It is claimed that the data loss may be the worst ever recorded in the UK, though the precise number of people implicated by the data won’t be known until the investigation is at a more advanced stage.