The incident is the latest in a string of high-profile security breaches in which customers of companies, including adultery website Ashley Madison, Carphone Warehouse and Barclays, may have had personal data stolen. In September this newspaper broke the news that personal data of tens of thousands of Lloyds Premier bank account customers had gone missing and was suspected to have been stolen by fraudsters. A spokesman for Lloyds Banking Group said: “We know that a maximum of 23,000 customers could have been affected by this issue. Of these account openings there have been no instances of fraud or indeed any customer complaints as of yet. “We take the financial security of our customers extremely seriously and have advanced safeguards in place across our IT systems. "All applications are scrutinised for anything suspicious and this triggers further action immediately.”We take the financial security of our customers extremely seriously and have advanced safeguards in place across our IT systems. All applications are scrutinised for anything suspicious and this triggers further action immediately." • Banks refusing to repay card fraud victims based on 'a hunch' "We recognise that allowing customers to view linked accounts immediately following an online application could have been used inappropriately in certain, limited circumstances and this will no longer happen." Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, said: “In a world where scammers and hackers are getting ever more powerful we need our banks to step up their action, this isn't good enough. “While the linked accounts are 'view-only' so you couldn’t make changes or payments, the ability to easily view all of someone’s banking details is a criminal’s Christmas, never mind the potential privacy breach. "We are often told to protect ourselves but they need to act in a way that protects us too. This wasn’t a clever hacker creating a breach, it was simply a design flaw. If they're not much more professional than phishing websites, how are we to judge who's real and who's a fraud?” katie.morley@telegraph.co.uk
A security flaw at Halifax and Bank of Scotland would have allowed anyone exploiting the loophole to be able to view a customer's bank, savings, credit card or loan details online. The risk was discovered September by MoneySavingExpert, which allowed the banks time to fix the flaw first before announcing it publicly. Lloyds, who owns the banks, said they were taking it "extremely seriously", and there had not yet been any instances of fraud from customers affected by the issue.