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One million bank customers' details sold on eBay
Second-hand PC turns up on auction site

By Julian Goldsmith

Published: Tuesday 26 August 2008

One million bank customers' details have turned up on a second hand PC sold over online auction website eBay.

According to reports, the PC, originally owned by archiving company Graphic Data of Shoeburyness in Essex, was bought by an eBay user based in Oxford and contained information on customers of American Express, NatWest and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) on its hard drive.

The data is reported to include mobile phone numbers, bank account numbers, mothers' maiden names and signatures.

A statement from Graphic Data said: "The IT equipment that appeared on eBay was neither planned nor instructed by the company to be disposed. Investigations are ongoing to find out how this equipment was removed from one of our secure locations. We take customer privacy and data security very seriously. This incident is extremely regrettable and we're taking every possible step to retrieve the data and ensure this is an isolated incident."

An RBS spokeswoman said in a statement the data on the PC related to credit card applications.

She said: "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."