United Kingdom police arrest third person in TalkTalk breach investigation

This was the third in a string of arrests related to the alleged data theft, following the arrest of a 16-year-old boy from Feltham, west London, and a 15-year-old from County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

A 20-year-old man was arrested after police executed a search warrant at an address in south Staffordshire, the Metropolitan Police said Sunday.

TalkTalk said earlier this week that fewer people were affected by the hack than initially thought, but that did not lessen the seriousness of the incident.

The mobile phone giant said 1,827 accounts had been breached, potentially providing criminals with customers’ names, mobile numbers, bank sort codes and the last four digits of their bank accounts. The other two arrested in the case face the same suspicion under the same offense.

Police confirmed that officers have also carried out a search at a residential property in Liverpool in connection with the cyber attack. He was bailed until a date in November.

The man, who was detained at an address in Staffordshire on Saturday, is the third person to be held in relation to the alleged data theft.

Enquiries by the MPCCU supported by officers from the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit continue.

TalkTalk’s website was breached on October 21, exposing customer names, addresses, birth dates, email addresses, phone numbers, account information, payment card and bank account details.

TalkTalk’s chief executive Dido Harding has said the scale of the attack was “much smaller than we originally suspected” but she said the company still needed to “work hard to earn back your trust”.

“As we have previously confirmed, the credit and debit card details can not be used for financial transactions”.