Bank of Scotland fined for fax gaffe

fax-machine-800x800Bungling staff have triggered a £75,000 fine for the Bank of Scotland, after the data watchdog found that the ham-fisted employees had been keying in inaccurate fax numbers and sending sensitive documents to the wrong people for over three years.
An investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office revealed that details that were misdirected included payslips, bank statements, account numbers and mortgage applications, along with customers’ names, addresses and contact details.
The gaffe went on for three years, with the first incident reported to the bank in February 2009 by a third party firm. In total, at least 21 documents were sent to the organisation during this time, with another member of the public receiving a further 10 misdirected faxes.
Both parties had fax numbers that were one digit outside the intended recipient, which was a department within the bank that routinely uploaded documents onto the bank’s system.
Despite the company being informed of the problem on numerous occasions, the errors continued. The matter was eventually referred to the ICO by the third party organisation, yet further mistakes were made even as the ICO was investigating the breaches.
ICO head of enforcement Stephen Eckersley said: “The Bank of Scotland has continually failed to address the problems raised over its insecure use of fax machines. 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.
“Let us not forget that this information would have been all a criminal would ever need to carry out identity fraud. Today’s penalty reflects the seriousness of this case.”

1 Comment on "Bank of Scotland fined for fax gaffe"

  1. Oops, Bank of Scotland gets ICO fine after staff sent confidential faxes to wrong number for 3 yrs http://t.co/YUP5L1WxBJ #dataprotection

Comments are closed.