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UK credit card customers details 'free to access via Google'

The credit card details of as many as 19,000 British consumers have been made freely available on the internet, it has been revealed.

Highlighting the growing problem of online card fraud, it is believed that fraudsters obtained complete sets of information, including names, addresses and card details, and were then planning to sell this data on to other criminals.

However, the sensitive information was released into the public domain and therefore made accessible to anyone via a simple Google search, the UK payments authority Apacs has confirmed.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the details posted were those of borrowers signed up to Visa, MasterCard and American Express, though the search engine has since announced that they have been removed from the web.

Reacting to the news, a spokesman for the industry body said: "The banking industry takes every data breach extremely seriously.

"We'd like to remind all online businesses of their responsibility to store card details securely."

Following on from the news, the All Party Group on Identity Fraud stepped up calls for credit card companies to do more to ensure their customers are safeguarded from online fraud.

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