British broadband provider TalkTalk said a cyber attack on its website could have led to the theft of private data from its more than 4 million customers, in what would be one of the biggest such breaches of personal information in the UK.
The firm said on Thursday that Police Cyber Crime Unit investigations were ongoing, but “Unfortunately”, said the company announcement, ” there is a chance that some of the following data has been compromised: names, addresses, date of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, TalkTalk account information, credit card details and/or bank details. We are continuing to work with leading cyber crime specialists and the Metropolitan Police to establish exactly what happened and the extent of any information accessed.
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“Potentially this could affect all of our customers. I don’t know for certain, which is why we are taking the precaution of reaching out to everyone, ” CEO Dido Harding told the BBC.
The attack is the third to hit TalkTalk this year, and experts said it would damage the reputation of the company, which competes with bigger rivals BT, Virgin Media and Sky.
Shares in TalkTalk, which had fallen 7% since the group’s websites went down on Wednesday, fell another 8.5% on Friday morning to a two-year low of 238 pence. Some customers took to Twitter to vent their anger, DNA report.
Dido Harding, CEO, said: “TalkTalk constantly updates its systems to make sure they are as secure as possible against the rapidly evolving threat of cyber crime, impacting an increasing number of individuals and organisations. We take any threat to the security of our customers’ data extremely seriously and we are taking all the necessary steps to understand what has happened here. As a precaution, we are contacting all our customers straight away with information, support and advice around yesterday’s attack.”
TalkTalk Telecom Group provides pay television, telecommunications, internet access, and mobile network services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom.
It was founded in 2003 as a subsidiary of Carphone Warehouse and was demerged as a standalone company in March 2010.
Carphone Warehouse co-founder is David Ross.
