The Bank of Scotland has been caught in a major slip up and is being fined with a £75,000 fee for repeatedly faxing customers’ account information to the wrong numbers, reported Finextra. For over three years, BoS faxed payslips, bank statements and mortgage applications to the wrong recipients. The data was extremely detailed and included customer names, home addresses and other contact details.
The Information Commission’s Office (ICO) first received noticed about the error in February 2009, when a third party member reported nearly 21 documents had been sent to them by mistake. The customer who was supposed to accept the document had a fax number that only had a one-digit difference.
The ICO warned BoS about the complaint in addition to several other warnings, but the bank kept making the same mistake.
Stephen Eckersley, head of enforcement at ICO, commented, “To send a person’s financial records to the wrong fax number once is careless. To do so continually over a three year period, despite being aware of the problem, is unforgiveable and in clear breach of the Data Protection Act.”
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