Dixons has had its wrist slapped for leaving customer details in a skip outside one of its PC World stores.

To be fair to the world's favourite tech retailer there were only eight completed credit agreements found, but they did contain customers' personal and financial data. The store concerned was in Northamptonshire, and the data was discovered in January.

The Information Commissioner's Office said the information was more than two years old, so had been kept longer than it should have been, and had clearly not been disposed of properly.

John Browett, Dixons Store Group International's chief executive, signed a formal undertaking not to be using other people's skips for data deletion in future, to review data procedures and to train his staff.

Yesterday the ICO got Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust to promise to improve its data handling after it left a CD containing 100 patient records at a bus stop. The CD was not encrypted or password protected. The Trust was unable to explain why the CD had been made, never mind lost. ®