Updated Customers of three major UK banks woke on Thursday to find incorrect transactions appearing in their apps, a problem later attributed to a technical glitch.
Lloyds, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland – all part of Lloyds Banking Group – began reporting errors this morning after users complained of seeing strangers’ transactions in their banking apps. Others found their own balances had disappeared entirely, raising concerns about the security of their funds.
While fellow vultures were seemingly unaffected by the defect when we checked our apps, we heard from readers about their troubles.
Some could see details of transactions, which revealed users’ workplaces, salaries, charitable donations, and more.
Commenters under British personal finance guru Martin Lewis’s social media post about the bug also reported seeing other customers’ full names, postcodes, and state pension details. Some said they saw child benefit payments seemingly flowing into their accounts.
The malfunction appears to have affected users in different ways. Some reported that both their balances and transactions were awry, while others said balances remained normal but transactions appeared to be incorrect.
Some said the issue persisted even after restarting the app several times.
Screenshots of customer support chats, shared with The Register, showed that Lloyds acknowledged “how worrying this must be” for its users, and was escalating cases as a priority matter with technical teams.
Lloyds Group support staff also advised customers to avoid making transactions through its apps until the fault was resolved, but assured them their accounts remained safe.
It is unclear how many users in total were affected, to what degree data remains protected, or what caused the glitch.
Lloyds Banking Group did not respond to our requests for further information. Its social media teams are copy-pasting the same brief statement across all three banks’ pages: “Hi X, Sorry about this. Some customers are having issues with viewing transactions & balances right now. Bear with us as we fix this.”
We also contacted the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to understand whether Lloyds had reported itself to the data protection watchdog. It acknowledged the request but had not responded to questions at the time of publication. ®
Updated to add at 13202 UTC, March 12
An ICO spokesperson said: “We are aware of an incident affecting some online banking services and we will be making enquiries.”
