TalkTalk hack exposes up to 4 million UK consumers’ data

The British broadband provider suffered a ‘significant and sustained cyber attack’ and is reaching out to customers via phone, its website and media outlets.

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UK broadband and telecommunications provider TalkTalk went into damage-control mode after a “significant and sustained cyber attack” potentially exposed the data of its 4 million customers.

The company said it doesn’t have details on the breach, but customer names, addresses, birthdates, email addresses, account information, telephone numbers, credit card numbers and bank details could have been stolen.

Though the security breach happened Wednesday morning, TalkTalk didn’t announce the crisis until Thursday night.

“I can’t even tell you today exactly how many customers have been affected,” TalkTalk’s chief executive, Dido Harding, told ITV’s “Good Morning Britain” on Friday. “We have tried to come public as fast as we can once we have got a reasonable idea of what potential data has been lost.

“We are rushing to try and get that information to our customers as fast as we possibly can,” Harding added.

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