Dixons Carphone have announced a huge data breach involving 5.9 million payment cards and 1.2 million personal data records.
Dixons Carphone who have 700 Carphone Warehouse stores across the UK announced this morning that they suffered a huge data breach involving 5.9 million payment cards and 1.2 million personal data records.
They are currently investigating the hacking attempt which began July 2017 and believe the hackers had tried to compromise one of the processing systems of a Currys PC World and Dixons Travel stores.
Dixons have said there was ?an attempt to compromise? 5.8 million credit and debit cards but only 105,000 without chip-and-pin protection had been leaked. A further 1.2 million personal data records including names and addresses had been accessed by the hackers.
According to Dixons there has been no evidence that any of the data had been taken from their systems, and that so far there has been no evidence of fraud. They have brought in leading cyber-experts and are also contacting all those affected to advise them.
The Dixons Carphone breach is one of the largest breaches to date involving a UK company. With the breach being announced just weeks after the new General Data Protection Regulation came in to act, it is likely an investigation by authorities will also take place. However with the data breach pre-dating GDPR, any financial charges will likely be imposed under the previous Data Protection Act which has a maximum fine of ?500,000.
As a precaution, we recommend anyone who has shopped with Carphone Warehouse and Currys PC World to change any passwords to accounts they share with these stores. Dixons Carphone will be contacting those affected and will provide more information and further instructions.