Britain's financial watchdog on Tuesday said it was investigating a massive hack of the US consumer credit rating service Equifax that affected potentially almost 700,000 British customers.
In a short statement, the Financial Conduct Authority said "it is investigating the circumstances surrounding a cybersecurity incident that led to the loss of UK customer data held by Equifax Ltd on the servers of its US parent".
The hack between May and July resulted in the theft of personal information from around 145 million US customers and led to the resignation of Equifax chief executive Richard Smith.
Smith blamed a combination of human and technical error for the serious breach.
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