NI Energy Loses 13,000 customers accout data

NI Energy (Formerly Northern Ireland Electricity) has admitted it is currently missing a tape containing account data on nearly 13,000 customers.

The missing tape contains information about customers' electricity bills - Personal information on 12,799 NIE Energy electricity customers cannot be located, the company has revealed.

NIE Energy has written to all relevant customers to let them know that a data tape containing their names, addresses and other information is missing.

The company said contractors Northgate Information Solutions were responsible for processing billing information for NIE Energy. Letters sent by NIE to the affected customers are due to arrive later. The missing information concerns billing information for 10 August 2009. NIE said the missing tape did not contain any bank, debit card or any other similar information that would be classified as sensitive under the Data Protection Act. It contained details such as account names and addresses, customer numbers, bill amounts, previous payments and account balances from electricity bills compiled five months ago.

Apologising for the incident, NIE Energy managing director Stephen McCully said: "We fully appreciate that our customers will be concerned that any personal information regarding them is missing.

"However, while we have not been able to locate this tape, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that it has fallen into the wrong hands.

"A thorough investigation has been carried out and we have already introduced measures to prevent this from happening again."