M&S apologises for exposing customers' personal details
Marks & Spencer has apologised for leaking customers’ personal data after a glitch on its website resulted in people seeing each other’s details when they logged in.
The British retailer was forced to suspend its website last night after customers reported that they were able to see the payment details of other online shoppers.
An M&S spokesperson said: "Due to a technical issue, we temporarily suspended our website yesterday evening. This allowed us to thoroughly investigate and resolve the issue and quickly restore service for our customers. We apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused."
In the wake of the news breaking M&S was quick to dispel any rumours of a hack and said the issue was the result of a glitch caused by an internal error. Concerns of a hack were heightened following the recent cyber attack on TalkTalk which exposed detailed personal data of an unknown number of its 4 million customers.
The website was shut down for two hours as the company attempted to resolve the problem which led to customers’ personal data, including names, dates of birth, contacts and previous orders being shown to other customers when they logged in.
Concerned customers posted to the M&S website to say that they could see other customers’ orders and payment details when they logged into their own accounts.
M&S reassured customers that full credit card details were not among the exposed information. A spokesperson for the company said customers may have been able to see the last four digits of another person's payment card "for a brief moment" however there was no security risk as details were encrypted.
The issue has now been resolved however it is unknown how many people's details were seen by other M&S customers during the glitch period.