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ARTICLE · 28 JULY 2014

Holidaymakers Beware

MacRoberts
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The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has fined online travel services company Think W3 Limited £150,000 following a data protection breach arising from insecure "coding" on the website of their subsidiary business Essential Travel Limited.

United KingdomPrivacy
David Gourlay
David Gourlay
Valerie Surgenor
Valerie Surgenor
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The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has fined online travel services company Think W3 Limited £150,000 following a data protection breach arising from insecure "coding" on the website of their subsidiary business Essential Travel Limited.

The travel firm was hacked in December 2012, resulting in a total of 1,163,996 credit and debit card records of customers being extracted. Of those records extracted, 430,599 were identified as current details and 733,397 had expired.

The privacy watchdogs at the ICO stated that "cardholder details had not been deleted since 2006 and there had been no security checks or reviews since the system had been installed".

Stephen Eckersley, Head of Enforcement at the ICO, noted that the actions of Think W3 Limited were a "staggering lapse that left more than a million holidaymakers' sensitive personal details exposed to a malicious hacker.

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