More than 2000 British Gas customers warned after email addresses and account

Details of the leak will now be sent to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

However the details were discovered somehow, and if the British Gas site wasn’t breached in any way, it may be that these accounts were accessed by using account details garnered from a hack on a few other service, where people had re-used the same login information.

The energy firm has moved to reassure the 2,200 customers affected that despite email addresses and account passwords being placed online, their bank account information has not been put at risk. It did however urge everyone affected to update their information on the British Gas website and to do so elsewhere if any of that information was re-used at all.

The email from British Gas claimed the information had not come from the company, and said no payment data would have been at risk, the broadcaster said.

The details were posted to the document-sharing site Pastebin before being removed.

Next week, we assume we’ll be writing an article about a massive bank keeping customers’ personal details in a brown paper bag which they’ve hidden behind a plant-pot, and a massive supermarket that keeps customer data safe behind a chocolate fire-guard.

All customer accounts are now secure. she added.

It has also asked its affected customers to contact the company or to securely reset their passwords through British Gas’s website.

The company said no-one’s details were compromised by the “internal technical problem”.

It follows the data breach at TalkTalk last week.

A joint operation between the Met’s cyber crime unit, the PSNI’s cyber crime centre and the National Crime Agency is ongoing into the incident.