Callcredit in the dock over data gaffe

Data and credit referencing firm Callcredit is facing an investigation by the data regulator after a major blunder resulted in the company’s free service Noddle mixing up the financial records of twins.
The issue came to light when university medical researcher Louise Green had an application for a new fixed-rate mortgage turned down because of a bad credit score.
Somewhat bemused, as she had not missed any payments on either her credit card or mortgage, Green decided to investigate only to discover that all her sister Jo’s details – including loans, banks accounts, and mobile phone bills – had been mixed up with her’s on the Noddle service.
She could even see all the joint accounts and mortgage that Jo – who just so happens to work in marketing – shares with her partner, revealing the exact amount of debt she had.
However, the sisters had never had any financial links; they simply share the same surname and date of birth but live hundreds of miles apart.
Speaking to The Times, Jo said: “I spoke to Callcredit and they asked me if I was a twin before they I said anything, as apparently this has happened before.”
The Information Commissioner’s Office said: “This looks like a breach of the Data Protection Act. It doesn’t matter how closely related the customers are; if they haven’t given permission to share this information, then it is a breach. We would expect credit referencing agencies to have systems in place to ensure they are able to distinguish between twins.”
In its defence, Callcredit claimed it had a “very high success rate” of placing the right details on credit reports. However, it did concede: “Just ocassionally, our data matching will fail to find the right home for a particular item of data, as has been the case on this ocassion.”
The company has now removed the incorrect data and offered £200 in compensation.