MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The United Kingdom's Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) regulator said in a statement on Thursday it has fined London-based TalkTalk Group telecommunications company 100,000 pounds ($130,000) over failure to protect personal data of thousands of its customers.
"The Information Commissioner’s Office has fined TalkTalk Telecom Group PLC £100,000 after it failed to look after its customers’ data and risked it falling into the hands of scammers and fraudsters," the ICO said.
At any given moment, 40 Wipro employees have access to personal data of anywhere between 25,000 and 50,000 TalkTalks customers, which means that many individuals are always at risk, the ICO said.
According to the regulator, in September 2014, TalkTalk started to received complaints from its customers about scam calls they had allegedly received from the company. Those calling were able to quote the affected customers' personal data such as addresses and TalkTalk account numbers.
The company started investigating into the matter and reported to the ICO about the situation on September 11. In October, TalkTalk found that three Wipro user accounts has been used to gain "unauthorized and illegal access" to personal data of up to 21,000 customers. However the link between the access and scam calls has not been identified.
The ICO has ruled that "unjustifiably wide-ranging access to the relevant personal data by external agents put that data at risk."
This is not the first time TalkTalk has been fined by ICO. In October, the regulator issued a record 400,000-pound fine for the company's failure to ensure customer data security amid a cyberattack.
