Talk Talk has been fined £100,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), after it risked customer data falling into the hands of scammers and fraudsters. TalkTalk was found to have breached the Data Protection Act because it allowed staff to have access to large quantities of customers’ data. The ICO said personal data belonging to up to 21,000 TalkTalk customers could have been used for scams and fraud. The breach came to light in September 2014 when TalkTalk started getting complaints from customers that they were receiving scam calls. Typically, the scammers pretended they were providing support for technical problems. They quoted customers’ addresses and TalkTalk account numbers. The ICO then launched an investigation into how customer details, including names, addresses, phone numbers and account numbers, were compromised. Elizabeth Denham, the information commissioner, said: “TalkTalk may consider themselves to be the victims here. But the real victims are the 21,000 people whose information was open to abuse by the malicious actions of a small number of people.

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