Thousands of people in Britain were today being urged to cancel their credit cards after it emerged their details had been made freely available on a website, the Consumers' Association said.
The personal and financial details of what is thought to be around 2,700 customers could have led to serious fraud if they had fallen into the wrong hands.
Customers bought the Which? TaxCalc software, a self-assessment programme, via the Internet using a credit card as payment. Following the discovery of the flaw, the site has been shut down.
'This is a serious flaw in the security of the TaxCalc site and we are very concerned about it', said Kim Lavely, deputy director of the Consumers' Association.
'As soon as we were alerted to the flaw, we removed all personal and financial details from the TaxCalc site. We have already commissioned an independent security expert to conduct a thorough audit of the security of this site.'
The TaxCalc site will remain shut until this problem has been resolved.
