Flight Centre leaks fliers’ passport details to ‘potential suppliers’
Human error at travel company Flight Centre has resulted in a leak of personal information, including data of customers’ passports.
“Personal information relating to some leisure customers in Australia was accidentally made available to a small number of potential third party suppliers for a short period of time,” a spokesperson told Vulture South, attributing the situation “human error, not by a system or security failure”.
“When we became aware of the issue, we acted quickly and contained the information,” the spokesperson added. “We also sought and received assurances from the suppliers that they did not retain copies” and “we acted quickly and contained the information.”
The spokesperson added that the company believes “the risk that this information will be misused is relatively low given the circumstances”.
Pressed on how it reached that conclusion, the spokesperson had this to say:
There are a few reasons why we believe the risk is relatively low. Firstly, the suppliers involved were looking to develop products for us and to establish longer term relationships (they still are). Secondly, we noticed our error fairly quickly. Thirdly, we were engaging with these potential suppliers via a formal process, so they were familiar to us.
The Register asked the company how many records were mis-placed. In response to that request Flight Centre’s spokesperson said “I don’t really want to get into ongoing QA.” ®
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/13/flight_centre_data_breach/