The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has taken the remarkable step of banning the use of fax machines for any transmission of customer information in the wake of revelations that confidential data for hundreds of its customers had been faxed to a scrap yard operator in West Virginia.

The Toronto-based bank issued the ban in the early afternoon -- shortly after the scrap yard operator, Wade Peer, received two more faxes from CIBC branches, each of which contained confidential customer information.

Peer said one fax arrived at his office at about 11:15 a.m. ET Friday from a CIBC branch in Edmonton. The other arrived about an hour later from a CIBC branch in Ottawa. Both faxes contain names, social insurance numbers, phone numbers, and bank account details for CIBC customers in those cities.

Peer said he has received hundreds of similar documents since July 2001, despite alerting bank officials immediately about the problem and at several intervals since then.

Also Friday, Canada's Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart launched an investigation to determine if the CIBC violated Canadian privacy laws.

"This is virtually unprecedented in terms of scale in the private sector anyway," Stoddart told CTV in a telephone interview from Ottawa.

Stoddart said she launched her investigation after the bank's Ombudsman Lachlan Maclachlan telephoned her staff late Thursday afternoon. Maclachlan alerted the privacy commissioner just hours before CTV News and The Globe and Mail reported details of Peer's struggle to force the bank to stop sending him its confidential customer data.

The CIBC said that during the ban on fax machines, it will use couriers to move documents between branches and its head office.

"Longer term, we are exploring other potential secure technological alternatives for the timely transmission of confidential information between branches and processing centres," McLeod said in a telephone interview.

Stoddart said her investigation is also concerned with the length of time - more than three years - during which confidential customer data was faxed to Peer. "We'll be looking into the procedures within that bank that resulted in what appears to be such a serious breach of privacy," said Stoddart, a lawyer and historian who was appointed privacy commissioner on Dec. 1.

"It would appear to have gone on for a certain time. So how diligent was the bank in addressing this problem? What steps did they take? What went wrong?"

Stoddart said she expects her investigation to take about two months.

David Akin can be reached at dakin@ctv.ca