Barclays accused of breaching privacy

Barclay's Bank, one of the UK's leading banks, was recently part of an investigation that was carried out using an undercover reporter from the BBC. As a result of that undercover operation the bank is now being investigated by the Information Commissioner's Office, after being accused of breaching customer privacy and of underhand practices by the reporter that carried out the investigation. A report with regards to the investigation was published by the BBC recently, and the undercover operation at Barclay's went on for several months.

The BBC reporter claimed that staff members at the bank were being taught and encouraged to use underhand practices. This included contacting customers even if they had stated that they did not want to be contacted, lying to customers about various issues, inappropriately selling products and policies, and more. She also claimed that bank employees were not careful with regards to customer information, which has led to the ICO carrying out an investigation into breaches of security.

An internal investigation was also carried out by the bank when the report was published by the BBC, and the bank now has to pass on details of the internal enquiry to the Information Commissioner's Office, along with sales policies and procedures. An official from the ICO said: 'The ICO takes breaches of people's privacy extremely seriously. For instance, making sales calls to people who have expressly asked not to be contacted is totally unacceptable.

According to the reporter bank staff were also found to be accessing accounts of customers for no reason, and also were told to change their job titles when talking to customers to sound less like a sales person. Staff were passing themselves off as 'account consultants' when their actual job title was sales advisor.