A local council has accidentally published the personal details of 15,000 employees, including their salaries.
South Lanarkshire Council posted the spreadsheet online in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request which asked for details of staff pay grades.
The spreadsheet was only supposed to include anonymised employee data, but details on a second page of the FOI response were not anonymised.
Employee data leaks
The employee data leak is understood to have included names, workplaces, salaries and national insurance numbers.
The data was published last month and only discovered last week.
A spokesman for South Lanarkshire Council said: “A spreadsheet containing anonymised employee data was uploaded to a website in response to a Freedom of Information request.
“Unfortunately as a result of human error, the spreadsheet contained a second page of personal data that had not been anonymised. The error was noticed by the council and we arranged for that data to be removed.
“To the best of our knowledge the information was not accessed, and we believe the data could not be used in a way that would be harmful to those involved.
“However, I can confirm that we are contacting those affected by the error and we have reported the breach to the Information Commissioner.”
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Last year outsourcing and construction firm Interserve was fined £4.4m after hackers were able to gain access to employees’ personal data, including bank details and national insurance numbers.
