However, while BT requested that the personal information be held securely, the data was sent in a unencrypted document that could be read by anyone accessing the e-mail.
While some of the e-mails, detailing the internal workings of the company, may prove embarrassing, the leaking of an unencrypted document - that lists the personal details of more than 5,300 BSkyB Broadband subscribers alongside a list of adult videos they may have downloaded and shared online - could be a breach of the Data Protection Act.
(b) unencrypted: Unencrypted selectors are sent to and selected by the server using a standard algorithm.
Documents containing unencrypted SSNs and credit card numbers will have sharing removed and instructions will be sent to the owner as to how to remove/encrypt the document from LionMail Drive.
Easy to identify encrypted vs. unencrypted files the containers in Documents\encrypted vs. everything else.
It's one of the largest data breaches of the year — so far — totaling close to seven million call logs, six million text messages and other internal documents containing unencrypted passwords that if used could have allowed an attacker to gain deep access to the company's systems.
Mr Crossley said he had no further comment when asked why the Excel document was unencrypted, but said he had notified the police, the ICO and was in communication with the SRA.
Unencrypted e-mails are as open as postcards, warns Ben Wagner, an internet specialist at the European University Institute.
Unencrypted email makes for a great target.
A single penetration yielded 90 encrypted al-Qaeda documents, 16 encryption keys, 30 unencrypted messages as well as "thousands" of chat logs, according to an inventory described in one of the Snowden documents.
Manning's defence team had argued vociferously that he was not the source of this video, though the soldier did admit to later disclosure of an unencrypted version of the video and related documents.
