RBS WorldPay (formerly RBS Lynk), the U.S. payment processing arm of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group, announced on the 23rd December 2008 that its computer system had been improperly accessed by hackers with criminal intent. Approximately 1.5M accounts have been affected with potential exposure of 1.1M US Social Security numbers and other personally identifiable data.

Ben Barone, president and CEO of RBS WorldPay, said, “Privacy is important to RBS WorldPay and we regret any inconvenience this may cause affected individuals. We have taken important, immediate steps to mitigate risk and none of the affected cardholders will be responsible for unauthorized activity on their account resulting from this situation. We are working closely with leading computer security firms to further safeguard our system, and with law enforcement agencies, which we hope will result in the criminals being brought to justice.”

The fraud that has been identified to-date is associated with RBS WorldPay’s computer system supporting its U.S. pre-paid and open-loop gift card issuing business. So far actual fraud has been reported on approximately 100 cards. RBS state that Cardholders will not be responsible for unauthorized activity associated with this event. 

RBS WorldPay is offering impacted individuals whose Social Security numbers may have been affected a complimentary one-year membership in a national subscription credit monitoring service that provides access to individuals’ consumer credit reports and daily monitoring of their credit files from all three national consumer reporting agencies.