Today, Virgin Media, a leading cable operator in the UK and Ireland, said that the personal information of almost 900,000 of its clients was accessed without consent on at least one occasion due to a misconfigured and unsafe marketing database.

The company said it provided 14.6 million broadband, video, and fixed-line telephony services to about 6 million cable customers.

According to a continuing inquiry, Virgin Media revealed on February 28, 2020, that the uncovered database was available from at least April 19, 2019, and it was lately accessed by an unlawful party.

In a press release, CEO of Virgin Media, Lutz Schüler, said that the company “immediately solved the issue by shutting down access to this database, which contained some contact details of approximately 900,000 people, including fixed-line customers representing approximately 15% of that customer base.”

“The database did not include any passwords or financial details, such as credit card information or bank account numbers, but did contain limited contact information such as names, home, and email addresses and phone numbers,” he added.

Virgin Media also says that the leaky database was not used to store customer passwords or monetary details, like bank account numbers or credit card information.

The company directs customers who think that they might have been victims of identity theft to reach out to their bank or credit card firm to notify them of any out of regular transactions or requests made in their name without their information.

Customers were also advised over e-mail that they might be attacked by phishing attacks, scam, or nuisance marketing communications.

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