Bank data law breaches

Britain's biggest banks appear to be breaching data protection rules "with alarming regularity", a consumer group has said.

Which? Money said during the year to the end of August 2010, 515 complaints were lodged with the Information Commissioner's Office about possible data protection breaches by the country's eight largest banks and building societies in which the ICO thought it was likely the company concerned had broken the rules.

The group, which obtained the data through a Freedom of Information request, said the breaches reported could be just the "tip of the iceberg".