UK's Dixons Carphone Says Has Been a Victim of Cybercrime

British mobile phone and electricals retailer Dixons Carphone said on Wednesday it had been the victim of cybercrime, having discovered unauthorised access to payment card data held by the company.

The group said an ongoing investigation indicated there was an attempt to compromise 5.9 million cards in one of the processing systems of Currys PC World and Dixons Travel stores.

It said 5.8 million of these cards have chip and pin protection and the data accessed contained neither pin codes, card verification values (CVV) nor any authentication data that would enable cardholder identification or a purchase to be made.

However, it said 105,000 non-EU issued payment cards which do not have chip and pin protection have been compromised.

Dixons Carphone said it immediately notified the relevant card companies so that they could protect customers.

It said it had found no evidence of any fraud on these cards as a result of this incident.

The group has also found that 1.2 million records containing non-financial personal data, such as name, address or email address, had been accessed. It said there was no evidence of fraud here either.

© Thomson Reuters 2018