Newcastle council admits credit card mix-up
July 28, 2007 by admin
Filed under News, News-Credit-Cards
An administrative error by Newcastle City Council has led to up to 54,000 credit and debit card details being made public for over a year.
The security mishap, finally fixed in April this year, was revealed yesterday, as the council conducted an independent security review into its financial dealings.
Data including card numbers, names and addresses – all gold dust to fraudsters – were revealed, as a file of council transactions with local residents, including council tax, rent and parking fines, was uploaded to an insecure server.
Scant reassurance for local rate payers comes with the information that the file was encrypted, making it more difficult to read.
An exact figure for those exposed will come as the error is more fully investigated by an internal review.
“We very much regret that this situation has developed”, Newcastle council chief executive Ian Stratford said.
“We would stress that there has been no indication of any fraud or loss, and that we spotted this situation through the thoroughness of our own security and checking systems”, he added.
