A spokeswoman for the company said: “We can confirm we were contacted by someone claiming to be responsible and seeking payment”.
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All current and former TalkTalk customers are encouraged to watch their bank accounts closely in the coming months and report any suspicious activity to the police.
Speaking earlier, Jayne Snellgrove, detective superintendent of the Cyber Crime Unit, said: “We are aware of speculation regarding alleged perpetrators; this investigation remains at an early stage; a full assessment of the alleged data theft is ongoing”.
Baroness Harding told the Press Association (PA), “We have taken the precaution to assume the worst case, which is that all of our customers’ personal financial information has been accessed”.
Similarly, information was also stolen from TalkTalk parent company, Carphone Warehouse, which affected about a half million of TalkTalk’s clients.
The company is now contacting all its customers via email to warn them about the breach and to ask them to change their passwords etc.
A TalkTalk spokesman said: “A criminal investigation was launched by the Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit following a significant and sustained cyber attack on our website yesterday (Wednesday)”.
The amount of information that may have been stolen – including bank account numbers and sort codes – is also significantly lower than initially thought, she revealed, adding that this is “extremely good news” for TalkTalk customers.
It is the third time this year that TalkTalk’s data has been breached, which has put the company’s reputation at risk. Local authorities are investigating into this massive cyber-attack since the hackers are demanding for ransom.
The data breach was announced on Thursday by TalkTalk CEO, Dido Harding.
“Unfortunately cyber criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated and attacks against companies which do business online are becoming more frequent”, she said.
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She continued: “It’s too late for them (TalkTalk) to regain customer trust given that they have already been hacked twice before and they can’t actually tell us whether our information was encrypted or not”.
