Newsroom
Financial information of potentially hundreds of thousands of British Airways customers has been stolen, during a data breach affecting online payments made through the UK flagship carrier’s website.
According to BBC, about 380,000 transactions were affected during a hacking attempt from August 21 through September 5, but the stolen data did not include other sensitive information such as travel or passport details.
BA issued a statement saying the breach was resolved and the website was working normally.
"We have notified the police and relevant authorities. We are deeply sorry for the disruption that this criminal activity has caused. We take the protection of our customers' data very seriously," the company said.
Frustrated customers took to social media saying nobody contacted them directly to inform them of a potential data theft
But media reports said frustrated customers took to social media to complain about the security breach, many of them saying they had no idea as nobody had contacted them directly to inform them of a potential data theft.
Last year, BA suffered another problem when a massive computer system failure in May 2017 caused 75,000 customers to be stranded at London’s Heathrow airport over a holiday weekend.
Two months later, despite promises by executives they would take steps to prevent similar incidents, more flights had to be delayed or cancelled due to IT system issues from a supplier.
Both problems last year were related to power supply issues that ultimately caused computer systems to fail.
No delays or cancellations were reported as of Friday while the airline says it has launched an internal investigation.
