Five cases of cyber crime at agents’ businesses have been uncovered this year by just one company.

All could have been fatal events for the companies concerned.

Four cases involved the agents’ own staff using systems to sell on landlord and property data, and the fifth was a third party professional hacker.

The cases were all uncovered during compliance checks by software firm VTUK.

The firm said that the insider jobs involved disgruntled staff “funding their weekends”– and usually selling on five to ten landlord data per week.

It said that in the fifth case a third party hacker was employed to get into the agency system and managed to do so within five minutes.

VTUK managing director Peter Grant said that in 25 years involving 10,000 consultations, he had never come across one case of cyber crime – until this year.

Grant said that cyber crime was expensive to agents, and mostly undetectable. He said it was entirely possible to sell landlord and property details over the internet, and he sent Eye several examples of how this is being done.

He said he had several examples of data being sold at a going price of £20 per landlord – possibly considered cheap at the price, given the value to a competitor.

Grant warned agents: “The average national revenue from a single landlord with two properties is £2,576.

“If this [cyber hacking] isn’t spotted early, the cost to you could easily be the loss of your business, and yet the perpetrators perceive this as a victimless crime.

“After all, nothing was stolen.

“If you then apply this to organised crime and the value of a list of 300 tenants’ details and those of 100 landlords, you can see why online data is low-hanging fruit.

“Do you know if you have been targeted, or are you perhaps just losing the odd landlord?”

Grant warned agents: “Data deprivation can be enacted remotely by hackers, so is an obvious target for anyone with an axe to grind against the business.”

The security checks that uncovered the hacking were by VTUK on agents’ previous or existing software suppliers, when VTUK was pitching for new business.

VTUK claimed that some of the lapses were uncovered when agents were using some of the best-known industry software.

Grant added that all of the cases uncovered so far related to lettings, but there could easily be others related to sales.

He said: “Imagine getting the whole of that book of an agency. That list is the value of the business.”

Grant said the absolute least that letting agents should do to prevent their data being stolen was to change the password on their deposit scheme log-ins.

He also warned that with offices left empty over the Christmas period, businesses were at increased risk.