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A total of £139,000 in compensation has been paid to 3,625 customers for distress and inconvenience.
Thousands of Bank of Scotland customers have been paid compensation after an app glitch allowed users to see other people’s transactions on their accounts in a major data breach.
Lloyds Banking Group said up to 447,936 Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers saw other user’s transactions or had their data shared with others due to IT issues on March 12. Jasjyot Singh, consumer relations boss at Lloyds, apologised for the incident on behalf of the bank in a letter disclosing the scope of the issue to Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee.
The banking firm confirmed 114,182 people clicked on other people’s transactions when they became visible. It added they therefore may have been shown more detailed information such as account details, national insurance numbers and payment references.
The bank has so far paid out £139,000 in compensation to 3,625 customers for distress and inconvenience linked to the incident. It said no customers have so far been identified as suffering financial losses as a result.
The letter highlighted the personal data of individuals who were not Lloyds group customers had also been visible. Lloyds said the incident was caused by a “software defect” from an overnight IT update.
Lauren Johnstone, from Strathaven in South Lanarkshire, was left outraged when she woke up to see transactions made by someone in Liverpool displayed on her phone.
Her partner raised the alarm after getting a notification of a £1,000 transaction appearing on their joint account. After logging on to the Bank of Scotland app, Lauren was able to see salary details and child benefit payments that belonged to another customer.
She was also able to see DVLA car payments showing registration plate numbers. Lauren, 36, previously told the Record: “My partner and I are getting married and we have a joint account.
“He got a notification for a transaction totalling £1,000 and immediately asked what I was spending a grand on. I hadn’t made any payments, so I logged in to find someone else’s account informations displaying on my app.
“I could see all of their payments including their salaries, car registration number for a direct debit to DVLA and even child benefit payments. On my partner’s phone, he was getting transactions for multiple accounts shown every time he opened the app.
“I complained to Bank of Scotland and all they told me at the time was that they’re looking into it. The account being shown on my phone was Liverpool-based.
“I’m worried that someone could see my account, since I was able to view other peoples’. This is a massive and outrageous data breach that should never have happened.”
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Donald MacLeod, from Ullapool in the Highlands, said his mother-in-law had been affected. He told how his wife could see names, account numbers and sort codes that didn’t match up to their own details.
The 48-year-old earlier said: “My wife manages my mother-in-law’s account, so she logged on this morning and saw someone else’s details and transactions appear on her phone. She initially thought she had been hacked. There were payments from Disney, Netflix and Apple. She could see someone else’s name and details.
“She phoned Bank of Scotland to complain and said they were quite dismissive. It’s concerning because if we are seeing other people’s details, they will be seeing ours. It’s a big data breach and totally unacceptable.”
Chair of the Treasury Committee, Dame Meg Hillier, said: “Modern banking methods mean we can now perform a variety of tasks on our phones in a matter of seconds, and almost anywhere.
“What this incident brings into focus is the fact that there is a trade-off. By moving more interactions with our bank online, we place our faith in technology which can suffer unpredictable errors.”
A Lloyds spokesman said: “On March 12, some customers using our app may have briefly seen transactions that were not their own following an IT change. The issue was quickly identified and resolved, and we’ve contacted customers whose transactions may have been visible for that short time.”
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