British Gas customers' data leaked in cyber security breach

More than 2,200 British Gas customers have had their email addresses and passwords leaked online in a security breach at the utility company.

British Gas said it was confident that the incident, which occured on Wednesday evening, had not come from inside the company itself.

No payment data had been comprised, it added.

British Gas, which is part of Centrica, sent an email to the affected customers late on Wednesday to reassure them.

The email read: "I can assure you there has been no breach of our secure data storage systems, so none of your payment data, such as bank account or credit card details, have been at risk.

"As you'd expect, we encrypt and store this information securely.

"From our investigations, we are confident that the information which appeared online did not come from British Gas."

It was the third time in a week that a British company had suffered from a data breach.

On Tuesday evening, the personal details of Marks & Spencer customers were posted online.

A few days earlier, TalkTalk was targetted by a cyber attacker that leaked bank account details of customers online.

Additional reporting by PA