British Gas fall victim to third cyber crime in a week

BRITISH Gas customers have had their personal details posted online in the third data privacy scandal within a week.

Account passwords and customer email addresses for about 2,200 people appeared online despite the company insisting that its systems are secure, after sending customers an email informing them of the incident.

In the email sent to customers, the company said: “I can assure you there has been no breach of our secure data storage systems, so none of your payment data, such as bank account or credit card details, have been at risk. As you’d expect, we encrypt and store this information securely.”

“From our investigations, we are confident that the information which appeared online did not come from British Gas,” the company added.  

This is the third incident to affect a major UK company in a week. On Tuesday October 27, UK retailer Marks & Spencer suspended its website for two hours following an incident where customers could see other people’s details once they logged in to their accounts.

A 15-year-old boy was arrested in connection to another cyber crime that affected UK broadband provider TalkTalk.