THE Post Office has accidentally published the names and home addresses of 555 subpostmasters wrongfully convicted in the Horizon scandal, it has been reported.
Among them is one from Golborne. Meanwhile, three from Wigan were also published.
The dossier supposedly showed the details of those involved in suing the Post Office in 2019, including their postcodes, and it was on the website in full yesterday, Wednesday, before being later taken down, the Daily Mail said.
It was allegedly entitled ‘Confidential Settlement Deed’ and reportedly set out that the contents were private.
A Post Office spokesman said: “The document in question has been removed from our website.
“We are investigating as an urgent priority how it came to be published.
“We are in the process of notifying the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) of the incident, in line with our regulatory requirements.”
An ICO spokesman added: “We have not received a data breach report on this matter.
“Organisations must notify the ICO within 72 hours of becoming aware of a personal data breach, unless it does not pose a risk to people’s rights and freedoms.
“If an organisation decides that a breach does not need to be reported, it should keep its own record of it and be able to explain why it was not reported if necessary.”
More than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015, as Fujitsu’s faulty system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.
Hundreds of victims are awaiting compensation, despite the Government announcing that those who have had convictions quashed are eligible for £600,000 payouts.
In 2017, legal action was launched against the Post Office by the 555 subpostmasters.
Two years later, a High Court judge ruled that Horizon contained a number of ‘bugs, errors and defects’, and there was a ‘material risk’ that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were caused by the system.
The Post Office agreed to pay out £58million to them.
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