Vodafone has been the latest victim of a corporate hacking attack - the mobile operator has been targeted twice in the last week.

It is currently contacting 1,800 affected customers across the UK after hackers accessed users' email addresses and passwords through both a third party, and its own computer system which is based in England was not breached, according a statement from the company.

The attempts to brake in to the data base were noticed by the company between Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon.

On Friday it notified the UK's National Crime Agency and Information Commissioners’ Office, the body who is responsible for overseeing the protection of personal data.

The company has said that the hackers could have potentially gained customers' names, phone numbers and the last four digits of their bank account numbers and that "a handful" of customers have been subject to fraud attempts.

TalkTalk Telecom was also attacked on October 23rd and received a ransom demand from hackers.

Three people were detained in connection with the incident, the third was arrested on Saturday, and released on bail from Scotland Yard yesterday.