PICTURES of shoppers' cars at a Hereford supermarket were put online after a "security breach".

The automated numberplate recognition (ANPR) cameras at the Tesco in Bewell Street were installed in 2016 to try and reduce the amount of people misusing spaces as they shopped elsewhere.

But the system was taken down earlier this year after a technical issue meant pictures of cars using the car park were accessible online.

A Tesco spokesperson said: “A technical issue with a parking app meant that for a short period historic images and times of cars entering and exiting our car parks were accessible.

"Whilst no images of people, nor any sensitive data were available, any security breach is unacceptable.

“We disabled the app a number of months ago whilst we work with our service provider to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

The Hereford supermarket was one of 19 car parks linked to the app and were affected by the security breach, where pictures had been left exposed after a "data migration exercise".

The company is still working with its service provider to ensure a breach cannot happen again, and the system is not in use currently.

Shoppers were able to park for two hours providing they met the minimum spending requirement in the supermarket, before the system was taken down.

The ANPR cameras were able to monitor how long customers spent in the car park, and then a unique code was generated and printed on shopping receipts, to be scanned at machines before leaving the car park to validate the free parking.

Customers who parked for 30 minutes or less were able to use the car park for free, without the requirement of spending a minimum amount in the supermarket.