The UK's second-largest bank by assets has been talking with regulators, British authorities and its clients for a potential leak of account information of its customers, said a Bloomberg report. Barclays Plc spokeswoman Carey Withey said in an emailed statement that the probe launched by the bank suggested that the data in question would be from 2008 or an earlier year and is connected with a financial-planning that the bank had shut down three years ago.
The Mail reported on Sunday that as many as 27,000 customer files had been compromised. The files reportedly contain personal and financial information, said a whistleblower to the UK newspaper, and was not clear how the files were nabbed. The whistleblower, however, said that the files were to be auctioned off to brokers for investment scams.
The Mail confirmed the breach when the whistleblower had in him in his person a memory stick with 2,000 files on customers, of which some or all contain income, savings, mortgages, health issues, insurance policies and passport details, and national insurance numbers. The whistleblower also said that the going price for each of the files was at £50 or $82. Tha Mail also said that the unnamed source came to know about the files in September last year when a brokerage firm asked him to auction the 20-page document to other traders.
Withey added, "We are grateful to the Mail on Sunday for bringing this to our attention and we contacted the Information Commission and other regulators on Friday as soon as we were made aware. This appears to be criminal action and we will cooperate with the authorities on pursuing the perpetrator."
In an emailed statement, UK Information Commissioner's Office said, "It's crucial that people's personal information is properly looked after. We'll be working with the Mail on Sunday this week to get further details of what has happened here, as well as working with the police."
