VIRGIN Media faces a comp- ensation bill of £4.5billion after leaving customers’ private details online, including which porn sites they watch.
The telecoms giant left the personal details of 900,000 customers accessible for ten months.
Full names, email addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers — and also their requests to unblock explicit websites — were listed.
The database, used for marketing purposes, included 1,100 names who asked for adult websites to be unblocked by using online forms.
Most phone networks automatically block the sites and ask users to provide proof of age. The data breach did not include passwords or financial details.
Your Lawyers, a consumer action and data breach law firm, is suing Virgin Media for affected customers after the breach was uncovered by a security researcher earlier this year.
It estimates each of them could be in line for £5,000 compensation for financial and emotional distress.
Crooks could have used the information to blackmail or scam victims. The cock-up was caused by an incorrectly configured database.
Virgin Media, which is owned by US cable group Liberty Global, has admitted that most of those affected were people with television or fixed-line telephone accounts.
However, the database also included some Virgin Mobile users.
Virgin Media chief Lutz Schüler said: “Protecting customers’ data is a top priority and we sincerely apologise.”
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