Harding refuses to say sorry to customers for TalkTalk hacking

TALKTALK chief executive Dido Harding still refuses to apologise for financial losses caused to her customers following a cyber attack which saw 157,000 customer’s details stolen by online criminals.

Appearing before the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee, Harding yesterday insisted not a single TalkTalk customer had lost money as a direct result of the hack on October 21.

TalkTalk had previously said that customers only lost money if they were duped into handing over extra information to conmen – something outside its control. The mobile firm had initially told its 4m customers that their data was at risk, before discovering the real figure was much lower two weeks later.

Those who were hacked each had up to eight items of personal information stolen, including names, addresses, dates of birth and bank details. The firm came under fire for offering paltry compensation to those who were affected. In one case a customer who had £3,500 stolen from his personal bank account was offered £30.20 as a ‘good will gesture’.

Yesterday Harding ( pictured) drew a distinction between instances when criminals access customers’ accounts directly, and those when fraudsters use hacked TalkTalk information to glean further details from customers and steal from them.

She apologised for the ‘concern and uncertainty’ suffered by customers in the wake of the incident, but emphasised multiple times that losses would have to be ‘direct’ for TalkTalk to intervene.

She said: ‘Anyone who has directly lost money as a direct consequence of this criminal attack, we absolutely wish to talk to them and deal with it on a case by case basis. I am today not aware of anyone who has directly lost money as a result of the criminal attack. If they have directly lost money as a result of a criminal attack I would like to look at their cases.’

When asked about a data breach in 2014, in which a customer was not told his data was compromised until nine weeks after it had happened Harding stood firm.

She said: ‘I think that’s human. I don’t apologise for how we’ve acted, I don’t apologise for having learnt.’

MPs yesterday scrutinised the fact that at present only telecoms firms are required to disclose if they have suffered a security breach. Harding called for this to be extended to all big companies.