Finance company warns customers that scale of data breach may widen

Australian company Latitude Financial has today warned the amount of customer details stolen during a cyber attack may grow.

In an update on the data breach, the non-bank lender confirmed that driver's licences, passports and Medicare numbers have been hacked.

The company publicly announced the data breach last Thursday. It said then that about 330,000 customers were believed to have had their personal details stolen.

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"As our review deepens to include non-customer originating platforms and historical customer information, we are likely to uncover more stolen information affecting both current and past Latitude customers and applicants," the company said.

Latitude Financial offers interest-free instalment plans and personal loans for shoppers at firms such as Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi, The Good Guys and David Jones.

It said the cyber attack is now the subject of an investigation by the Australian Federal Police, but the scale of the data breach could grow.

"As our review deepens to include non-customer originating platforms and historical customer information, we are likely to uncover more stolen information affecting both current and past Latitude customers and applicants," the company said.

Latitude Financial also provided a breakdown of the customer data stolen to date.

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The vast majority - 96 per cent - were driver's licences or driver's licence numbers, while less than 4 per cent was copies of passports or passport numbers and less than 1 per cent was Medicare cards.

"As our review deepens to include non-customer originating platforms and historical customer information, we are likely to uncover more stolen information affecting both current and past Latitude customers and applicants," the company said today.

From today, it will begin contacting affected customers and applicants about what data was stolen and what the company is doing about it.

It has also set up dedicated contact centres for affected customers in Australia and New Zealand.

"Our focus is on protecting the ongoing security of our customers, partners and employees' personal and identity information," chief executive Ahmed Fahour said.

Because the cyber attack remains active, Latitude Financial said it was taking some of its systems for customers and merchant partners offline. But the company said it was working to gradually restore them to service in coming days.

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