Worcester Bosch admits data breach affecting 'tens of thousands' (original) (raw)

British boiler-maker Worcester Bosch has suffered a data breach that has inadvertently revealed the home addresses of “tens of thousands” of customers.

A “systems issue” on Sunday morning caused multiple emails with addresses and names of customers to be sent out by accident.

The manufacturer, based in Worcester, which claims to be the UK market leader in home boilers, said that phone numbers and bank details had not been shared.

A spokesman said: “Please be assured that Bosch takes the protection of customer information very seriously and we are confident that this will not result in any adverse effects for our customers.

“We are conducting a full investigation into this matter.”

Worcester Bosch, whose customer care line was unable to take calls due to high volume on Monday afternoon, told the BBC that the company had not been hacked but was due to a IT system switch.

It is the latest to fall victim to a software swap fiasco, although the fallout does not appear to be as catastrophic as the TSB online banking debacle. TSB was thrown into utter chaos following an IT meltdown on April 22 with customers unable to access their own money or bank balance two weeks after a systems migration went wrong.

The embattled high street bank spurned further last week by suggesting customers visit their local Post Office to access their bank accounts.

TSB’s boss Paul Pester, chairman Richard Meddings, and the chief operating officer of the lender’s Spanish parent Sabadell, Miquel Montes, were grilled by MPs during a bruising committee hearing into the debacle on May 3, where they apologised for the outages.

Embattled TSB sparked even further anger on May 4 when it suggested that frustrated customers - with no access to funds - visit their local Post Office to gain access their bank accounts.