Porn, gambling habits aired in Virgin Media breach: Report

A customer database left unsecured online by Virgin Media contained details linking some customers to pornography and explicit websites. The researchers who first discovered the database told that it contained more information than Virgin Media suggested, the BBC recently reported.

According to Virgin Media, the incident was not due to a cyberattack, but a misconfigured database which left personal details unsecured and available for anyone to access for 10 months.

"The database did not include any passwords or financial details, such as credit card information or bank account numbers, but did contain limited contact information such as names, home and email addresses and phone numbers.

"Based upon our investigation, Virgin Media does believe that the database was accessed on at least one occasion, but we do not know the extent of the access or if any information was actually used," the company said in a statement.

The firm first became aware of the issue last week, after it was identified by a researcher at security firm named TurgenSec.

The majority of those affected were customers with television or landline telephone accounts, though some mobile customers also featured on the database.

"We recently became aware that one of our marketing databases was incorrectly configured, which allowed unauthorised access. We immediately solved the issue by shutting down access," Lutz Schüler, CEO of Virgin Media, said in a statement, according to TechRadar.