(Credit: George Iordanov-Nalbantov)

The glitch occurred on the morning of Thursday 12 March, with those affected reporting seeing other people’s names, sort codes, wage payments, benefit transfers and spending histories dating back to December. Some users were able to view details from multiple different accounts simply by logging out and back in again.

One woman in Scotland told the BBC she was able to see the transactions of six different users over a 20-minute period, including National Insurance numbers used as payment references on DWP benefit transfers. Other customers reported seeing full names, postcodes, charitable donations, and state pension details belonging to strangers.

Lloyds Banking Group, which owns all three brands, confirmed the incident and issued an apology. The bank stated that the issue had been quickly identified and resolved, and assured customers that nobody had access to their actual accounts.

For many users, logging out and back in resolved the problem, though some continued to experience difficulties while the investigation was ongoing.

Despite the bank’s reassurances, the episode drew considerable scepticism from customers and privacy experts alike. Legal commentators noted that even a brief exposure of other customers’ financial details could potentially amount to a serious personal data breach under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

The Information Commissioner’s Office confirmed it was aware of the incident and would be making enquiries.

The glitch was particularly worrying as, whilst previous Lloyds outages typically prevented customers from accessing their own accounts, this incident exposed other users’ transaction information – a far more unusual and troubling outcome. The group has said it is reviewing what happened to ensure it cannot occur again.