U.K. FCA Accidentally Puts ‘Confidential’ Information on Website

(Bloomberg) --

The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority said confidential information may have been made accessible on its website, according to a statement from the regulator today.

The FCA said it was recently made aware that, in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request published on its website in November, certain “underlying confidential information may have been accessible.”

The response related to the number and nature of new complaints made against the FCA and handled by its complaints team between Jan. 2, 2018 and July 17, 2019. “The publication of this information was a mistake by the FCA,” according to the agency.

“As soon as we became aware of this, we removed the relevant data from our website,” the FCA said in its statement. “We have undertaken a full review to identify the extent of any information that may have been accessible.”

“In many instances, the extent of the accessible information was only the name of the person making the complaint, with no further confidential details or specific details of their complaint,” according to the FCA. “However, there are instances where additional confidential information was contained within the description of the complaint, for example an address, telephone number, or other information.”

The agency is contacting individuals concerned to apologize and advise them of the extent of the data disclosed and what the next steps might be. No financial, payment card, passport or other identity information were included.

To contact the reporter on this story: Colin Keatinge in London at ckeatinge@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sunil Kesur at skesur@bloomberg.net, Rebecca Smith

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