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Sensitive Bank Info Bought on eBay

by Tim Stevens on August 31, 2008 at 02:17 PM

Royal Bank of Scotland Customer Information Accidentally Sold on eBayEvery buy a used hard drive on eBay? If so, did it come with any surprises on-board after you installed it? Imagine how you'd feel if you installed your new (to you) drive and found millions of customer records from various banks! That's exactly what happened to Andrew Chapman from Oxford, England. Chapman bought the used drive for £77 (about $140) and found himself perusing customer records from the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), among others.

The drive came from the archiving firm Graphic Data, which is supposed to protect such data from getting into the wrong hands. Graphic Data's services are used by banks like RBS and American Express to store and, ultimately, dispose of confidential information.

How exactly this drive escaped without being cleaned remains to be seen, but we're guessing the company is scrambling to find out. Last year, after a similar leak due to a lost laptop, Nationwide Building Society was fined nearly two million dollars for not protecting customer information. Expect something similar here. [From: BBC News]

Tags: banking, ebay, rbs, security

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