Reports say customer bank data stolen from South Staffs could turn up on dark web

Banking details of South Staff Water customers that the company revealed as having been hacked in August have been reported in the national press as potentially leaked on the so-called dark web used by cyber criminals.

The data affected in the incident, the company said, was “the name and address of the water account holder, together with the sort code and account number used for the Direct Debit,” along with information needed to operate customers’ water accounts.

The company said; “We’ve been working with leading forensic experts to investigate fully what happened. Our investigation has now found that the incident resulted in unauthorised access to some of the personal data we hold for a subset of our customers.”

South Staffs said it has been “closely liaising with the police via the National Crime Agency.” It has offered customers credit monitoring service, TrueIdentity, to help them to identify if their data may have been misused by alerting them to changes to their credit reports.