A GARDA INVESTIGATION has been launched into the large-scale data breach at the Ennis-based Loyaltybuild, which manages customer loyalty schemes in Ireland and across Europe.

The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner has confirmed that the credit card details of over 500,000 people  may have been compromised.

Full card details of over 376,000 customers were taken, of which 70,000 were Supervalu Getaway customers and more than 8,000 AXA Leisure Break customers.

Details of an additional 150,000 clients were also potentially compromised.

Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes advised anyone concerned over the issue to “examine their credit card bills for the last month or so”.

He said that full credit card details were being held by the company when the breach happened, including CVV numbers, meaning they could potentially be used by the hackers.

“We’ve made  sure that banks have been alerted so they can be monitoring the credit cards for any unusual transactions either now or going into the future,” Hawkes said.

Details of up to a further 1.1 million people were also accessed. Hawkes explained that the figure was “separately made up of the access  hackers obtained to names, addresses, phones numbers and so on”.

“The point to be alerted there is that if people are getting strange phonecalls pretending to be from  Supervalu, Axa or their credit card company, just to be very careful as it seems the hackers would have access to that information as well. “

Hawkes said it yet to be ascertained whether money had been taken from anyone’s account.

“That’s the process that’s going on now as people check their accounts for any unusual transactions, so we won’t know until we hear back from people or their banks.”

The Data Protection Commissioner said Gardaí were attempting to track down who was responsible but that it was “an extemely difficult thing to do as the people typically are located in other countries and usually are very good at hiding their identity”.

He said the “one piece of good news” this morning was that it appeared customers just needed to check their statements for the last month or so. The advice yesterday was that people should check back over the last two years of transactions.

Read: Criminals “have all details needed to use credit cards”

Read: Supervalu payment card breach ‘more extensive’ than expected