More blunders / Bank faxed customer details to wrong people for years

The Bank of Scotland, part of the Lloyds Banking Group has been fined £75,000 for a series of fax blunders that saw customers’ account details sent to the wrong recipients on numerous occasions.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fined the firm after the incidents which saw payslips, bank statements, account details and mortgage applications, all with customer names and address, sent to wrong numbers.

In total, 21 documents were sent to a third party organisation by mistake, while a further 10 misdirected faxes were sent to a member of the public. Both of the wrong numbers had one digit different from the intended recipient, which was a department within the bank that handled document uploading to internal systems.

The first incident was reported to the bank as far back as 2009. Despite this warning, the problems persisted and eventually the third party receiving the wrong faxes told the ICO, which began an investigation.