News International has warned readers of the Sun newspaper that their personal information, including names, addresses, dates of birth, emails and phone numbers, has been stolen and posted on the internet.

In an email sent to affected customers on Monday evening, Chris Duncan, director of customer data for News International, said that the data was stolen during an attack on the Sun website on 19th July, in the midst of the hacking scandal, when a fake story about Rupert Murdoch’s death was posted on the site.

"We are contacting you because we believe that information that you submitted to us could have been accessed, and may have been published online," Duncan wrote. "No financial or password information was compromised."

One angry Sun reader tweeted, "Brilliant just got an email from #thesun saying my personal details have been stolen, f***ing marvellous".

The customer information was posted to the Internet by a hacker calling themselves ‘Batteye’ on Twitter. Links to numerous customer databases were posted through the Twitter feed including a "referendum mailing list", a list of competition entrants and a database of Miss Scotland contestants for 2009, 2010 and 2011.

The hacker said that they are not a member of either LulzSec or Anonymous, two hacking groups that have been in the media spotlight recently.