Latitude Financial on Tuesday said it would not reward criminal behaviour, nor did it believe coughing up ransom money would see customers’ stolen information returned or destroyed.

“Latitude will not pay a ransom to criminals,” company chief executive Bob Belan said.

“Based on the evidence and advice, there is simply no guarantee that doing so would result in any customer data being destroyed, and it would only encourage further extortion attempts on Australian and New Zealand businesses in the future.

“Our priority remains on contacting every customer whose personal information was compromised, and to support them through this process.”

About 7.9 million people had their driver’s licence details taken, and about 53,000 passport numbers were stolen in the hack, which was detected last month.

Latitude admitted an additional 6.1 million records dating back to at least 2005 were also poached, including names, addresses, telephone numbers and dates of birth.

Fewer than 100 customers had a monthly financial statement stolen, the consumer finance company told the ASX in March.

The attackers had, as part of their ransom threat, detailed stolen data consistent with Latitude’s disclosure about how many customers were affected, the company said.