40,000 at risk of fraud after buying aTV licence

HOUSEHOLDS who applied for a TV licence between August 29 and September 5 are being urged to check their bank statements for suspicious activity.

A technical update to the TV Licensing website left customers’ information vulnerable and meant that transactions carried out over the eight-day period were not as secure as they should have been. A spokesman says the issue did not affect debit and credit card transactions but the names, addresses, emails, account numbers and sort codes of around 40,000 customers may have been compromised.

The issue has been fixed and TV Licensing says there is no evidence of a cyber attack.

It says the chances of anyone accessing information are slim. But it is writing to customers advising them to keep an eye on their bank accounts for unusual activity.

Opportunistic fraudsters may target customers by posing as TV Licensing via email or phone. If you are unsure, do not respond and call TV Licensing on 0300 555 0286 to check if any correspondence is genuine.

A TV Licensing spokesman says: ‘We’re really sorry this happened but want to reassure customers that the risk is low and we’ve taken action to ensure it doesn’t happen again. There is no evidence of any attack and we’ve found no evidence of unauthorised access to information.’

If you are one of the affected customers you can find more information at tvlicensing.co.uk/secure