UK firm Dixons admits huge data breach

Dixons Carphone has admitted a huge data breach involving 5.9 million payment cards and 1.2 million personal data records.

UK mobile phone and electronics retailer Dixons Carphone has become the latest victim of cyber crime in which millions of customer card details were targeted.

"We have taken action to close off this access and have no evidence it is continuing. We have no evidence to date of any fraudulent use of the data as result of these incidents," the company said.

It said its ongoing investigation indicated there was an attempt to compromise 5.9 million cards in one of the processing systems of Currys PC World and Dixons Travel stores.

It said 5.8 million of these cards had chip and pin protection and the data accessed contained neither pin codes, card verification values (CVV) nor any authentication data that would enable cardholder identification or a purchase to be made.

However, it said 105,000 non-EU issued payment cards which do not have chip and pin protection had been compromised.

Dixons Carphone said it had immediately notified the relevant card companies so that they could protect customers.

It said it had found no evidence of any fraud on these cards as a result of this incident.

The group said it had also found that 1.2 million records containing non-financial personal data, such as names, addresses or email addresses, had been accessed. It said there was no evidence of fraud here either.

"We are extremely disappointed and sorry for any upset this may cause," said Chief Executive Alex Baldock.

"The protection of our data has to be at the heart of our business, and we've fallen short here."


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Source: AAP



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