Building society could face fine after data blunder

The Financial Services Authority could hit the society with a hefty fine if a serious breach of data security were to be found to have taken place. The building society said a printing error meant 3,155 account statements were sent out with another customer's initial and surname, account number, account balance and details of interest earned, printed on the reverse.

Skipton stressed that personal details such as addresses and dates of birth had not been sent out.

It also said that the accounts had passbooks, so anyone wanting to withdraw money had to have the appropriate passbook.It believes the letters contained insufficient information to allow a fraudster to withdraw cash from somebody's account.

A spokeswoman for Skipton said: "It was a printing error at a third-party mailing house that was handling these customers for us.

"We believe that the risk is negligible but that does not mean that we are not taking it seriously. We have written to all customers affected."

She said customers wanting additional peace of mind could have their account numbers changed.

A spokeswoman for the FSA said last night it could not comment on individual cases.

In 2007 a laptop containing details of up to 14,000 customers of Skipton Financial Services, a subsidiary of Skipton Building Society, was stolen from an IT consultancy employed by Skipton Financial Services.