Police have made a second arrest in relation to the investigation into alleged data theft from TalkTalk.



A 16-year-old boy was arrested in Feltham, west London, Metropolitan police said on Friday. He was released on bail until a date yet to be confirmed.



The arrest came days after a 15-year-old boy was arrested in Northern Ireland in connection with the cyber-attack, which prompted warnings from the phone and broadband provider that the bank details and personal information of its 4 million customers may have been accessed.

The Northern Ireland teenager was arrested on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act, police said. He was taken into custody at a County Antrim police station on Monday, while a search of his address was undertaken.

Police confirmed officers also carried out a search at a residential property in Liverpool in connection with the cyber-attack. Inquiries by the Met’s cybercrime unit and officers from the National Crime Agency, the British equivalent of the FBI, continued on Friday.

The first boy arrested, from Northern Ireland, was described by residents as a “quiet boy” who moved to the area recently with his family.

TalkTalk was targeted in a cyber-attack a week ago. The company said bank account numbers and sort codes may have been accessed.

But it stressed that criminals would need more information to enable them to take money from a customer’s bank account, and said the chances of achieving this was “very small indeed”.

The TalkTalk chief executive, Dido Harding, said she was still unsure how many of its 4 million UK customers had been affected by the attack.

The latest breach was the third in a spate of cyber-attacks affecting TalkTalk in the last eight months, with incidents in August and February resulting in customers’ data being hacked.