Hackers access Dixons Carphone customer details

Personal and bank data affected

Dixons Carphone has become the latest British firm to fall victim to a cyber attack after revealing 5.9 million customer bank card details and 1.2 million personal data records were hacked.

The retailer behind Currys said that while 5.8m of the payment cards targeted were protected by chip and pin, around 105,000 nonEU cards without chip and pin protection were compromised.

Dixons Carphone said relevant card companies had been notified, but added there was no evidence of fraud on the cards as a result of the incident.

It said its investigation had also found that hackers accessed non-financial personal data – such as name, address or email details – for 1.2m customer records.

The group is contacting all those affected, but sought to assure customers it had no evidence that this had resulted in fraud at this stage. It said it had called in cyber experts and added extra security to its systems following the breach, while also calling in the police and relevant authorities.

Dixons Carphone chief executive Alex Baldock admitted the group had “fallen short” of its responsibility to protect customer data.

The National Crime Agency is working with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to “understand what’s A grandmother who found one of the world’s rarest coins while clearing out her attic is to auction it off for more than £100,000.

The 69-year-old plans to go on a cruise and help her granddaughter buy her first home after selling an ‘exceptionally rare’ Charles 1 coin. Experts say the Rawlins’ Crown is one of only 100 ever made when it was minted during the monarch’s ill-fated reign in 1644. The grandmother, who wished to remain anonymous, said she kept it in a shoebox in a wardrobe for years after her grandfather passed it down to her.

Her grandfather, who was a fisherman like her late husband, may have got hold the coin in the docks in Hull or traded it for beer in a local pub, experts said.

“We fell short of our responsibility to protect customer data”

happened”. A spokesman for the ICO said: “Anyone concerned about lost data and how it may be used should follow the advice of Action Fraud.”

Dixons Carphone was fined £400,000 by the ICO in January after a 2015 cyber attack exposed the personal data of more than three million customers.

The latest data breach began in July last year, well before May 25 when new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules came into force. It means that Dixons Carphone will likely escape hefty fines under the new regime.