A FULL scale investigation was under way last night into a security breach at one of the UK’s best-known online gold buying firms.

The probe came after investigators from this newspaper alerted Gold Traders that the personal details of thousands of its customers has made their way on to the internet.

Information on display via a glitch in the firm’s supposedly secure website included clients’ home addresses, telephone numbers, and email – as well as details of precisely what gold they had either sold or were planning to sell.

Last night Phil Williams, the boss of Gold Traders, issued a grovelling apology and said that logs would be checked to ascertain the full extent of the breach.He said: ‘Firstly, I want to thank the Daily Star Sunday for bringing this breach to our attention. We have immediately acted to ensure that it has been closed for good.

‘My suspicion is that it will not be a significant breach in terms of who might have accessed the information but we will not be going over our internal logs to ascertain the exact extent of it.’

Mr Williams added: ‘No blame can be attached to the company looking after our website. The buck stops at my door and our customers have my deepest apologies.’

Inquiries by this newspaper reveal that the so-called “Golden Blunder” has existed for at least a month.

It was discovered by reader Ben Sutton when he contacted the firm to sell an old gold necklace.Mr Sutton, 30, from Sale, Greater Manchester, said: ‘They emailed me back a link to access my online claim form.‘I got a digit wrong when I was tapping in my claim number and the full personal details of someone else came up. I thought I was going mad so I changed the number again and again, putting in random numbers.

‘Each time I did it a different person’s details came up. I might have laughed except for the fact that I realised if I could do it to someone else they could do it to me.‘I suppose I could have contacted the company myself but I wanted to make sure they would act and be held accountable – so I contacted your newspaper. ‘This thing shouldn’t be allowed to happen.’

One TV producer who we contacted through the blunder asked to remain anonymous but spoke of her shock.She said: ‘Having your personal information breached in this way is bad enough, but what about people seeing how much gold you have and seeing your home address right next to it?

‘Also, what about the private nature of someone wanting to sell off say a golden wedding ring, something really personal, and other people being able to see that.‘It’s wrong,. Really wrong.’

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner, which investigates all potential data protection breaches, said it would look into the blunder if someone complained.‘The ICO takes breaches of individuals' privacy very seriously,’ he said. ‘Any organisation which processes personal information must ensure that adequate safeguards are in place to keep that information secure. The ICO encourages organisations to report any serious data security breaches so that the nature of the breach or loss can be considered.’