Barclays' Busted For Stealing, Selling Confidential Data Of Thousands Of Clients

thenews 2014.02.09 18:36

In recent months, the attention of the public has been consumed by concerns over private data abuse by such public spy agencies as the NSA, as well as what personal financial information may have been intercepted by rogue hacker black hats who in the past two months have been blamed for millions in credit card privacy breaches. However, so far there have been two major loose ends in the story of personal data collection (and abuse): just how web search browsers and cookie-based advertising companies collect everything there is to know about the particular interests and desires of any given individual, and just as importantly, how banks abuse client confidentiality by taking the secret financial data of their clients less than seriously.

Today, one of these loose ends got some much needed public exposure after the Daily Mail, of all places, reported that it had been approached by a whistleblower, who revealed that in one of the biggest breaches of bank secrecy, Barclays had stolen and sold the confidential personal and financial data of up to 27,000 clients to the highest market bidder, in most cases rogue traders who had seen Glengarry Glen Ross one too many times, and who would then use Jordan Belfort-inspired tactics to sell money losing investment products to those unlucky thousands who had entrusted their data to the bank.

Is this the case of yet another "Snowden" growing a conscience and exposing the fraud he had witnessed for all to see? For the time being, it sure looks like it: "This is the worst [leak] I’ve come across by far,’ said the former commodity broker and whistleblower. ‘"But this illegal trade is going on all the time in the City. I want to go public to stop it getting bigger."

From the Mail:

Barclays Bank is reeling from an unprecedented security breach after thousands of confidential customer files were stolen and sold on to rogue City traders.
In the worst case of data loss from a British High Street bank, highly sensitive information, including customers’ earnings, savings, mortgages, health issues and insurance policies, ended up in the hands of unscrupulous brokers. The data ‘gold mine’ - also containing passport and national insurance numbers - is worth millions on the black market because it allowed unsuspecting individuals to be targeted in investment scams.

Barclays last night launched an urgent investigation and promised to co-operate with police.

It is not clear how the records were stolen, but the bank could face an unlimited fine if found guilty of putting customers’ details at risk.

The leak was exposed by an anonymous whistleblower who passed The Mail on Sunday a memory stick containing files on 2,000 of the bank’s customers.

He claimed it was a sample from a stolen database of up to 27,000 files, which he said could be sold by shady salesmen for up to £50 per file.

Of course, Barclays has had its share of legal troubles in recent years, having been exposed as the first bank in the still growing Libor-rigging scandal for which is was fined GBP290 million, and now this data loss, which is a breach of its obligations under the Data Protection Act to keep personal information secure, will almost certainly cost its many more hundreds of millions in legal fees and damages.

The sources of the breached and stolen files was data collected from customers who had sought financial advice from the bank, and passed on their details during meetings with an adviser. The consultations included filling out questionnaires - or ‘psychometric tests’ - which revealed their attitude to risk. That information could be exploited to persuade victims to buy into questionable investments.

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