TalkTalk hack: exactly 156,959 customers had personal details stolen

Two weeks after TalkTalk confirmed a “significant and sustained cyberattack” on its website, the company has revealed exactly how much data was stolen. Hackers obtained personal details for 156,959 customers, including their names, email addresses and phone numbers. A week ago it placed the figure at “less than 1.2 million” — and while that was technically accurate, today’s update should feel like a radical downgrade. Of those affected customers, TalkTalk says 15,656 bank account numbers and sort codes were obtained in the attack. That’s down from the “less than 21,000” it had stated previously.

TalkTalk has also clarified that the 28,000 obscured credit and debit card numbers that were taken — this figure hasn’t budged from last week — can’t be used for financial transactions. In its previous update, the company broke out the number of stolen customer dates of birth too, but this information is noticeably absent in today’s statement — we suspect it’s been bundled into the new 156,959 figure, which simply covers “personal details.” TalkTalk is keen to emphasise that overall, only four percent of its customers have any “sensitive personal data” at risk.

Source: TalkTalk