I'm wondering if this has been going on for decades and is now just being discovered or if these companies are just totally incompetent.
Citigroup has reported that 3.9 Million customers are potentially at risk due to backup tapes that were lost. They're quick to seem to dismiss it since "the company had no reason to believe the information has been used inappropriately and that it has received no reports of unauthorized activity". Data that was lost includes "Social Security numbers, names, account history and loan information about retail customers, and former customers, in the United States".
This on the heels of a few other issues recently:
700,000 customers put at risk by PNC, Commerce Bank, Wachovia and Bank of America
12 Call Center Employees In India Steal $350,000 From Citibank Customers In New York
Citigroup has followed the banks above by offering their customers a whole 90 days of free credit monitoring. Whoopie! We can only hope some of the executives information is on there andthey suffer the fate of identity theft like they put their customers at risk for.
CNN
Citigroup said Monday that personal information on 3.9 million consumer lending customers of its CitiFinancial subsidiary was lost by UPS while in transit to a credit bureau -- the biggest breach of customer or employee data reported so far.
Citigroup, the nation's biggest financial services company, said that UPS lost the tapes while shipping them to a credit bureau in Texas.
The tapes covered CitiFinancial customers and about 50,000 customers with closed accounts from CitiFinancial Retail Services. Customers of CitiFinancial's auto and mortgage businesses were not affected.
...
"We deeply regret this incident, which occurred in spite of the enhanced security procedures we require of our couriers," Kevin Kessinger, executive vice president of Citigroup (Research), said in a statement. "Beginning in July, this data will be sent electronically in encrypted form," said Kessinger, who heads the company's consumer finance business in North America.
In its letter, New York-based Citigroup told the people affected there was "little risk of your account being compromised because you have already received your loan."
"No additional credit may be obtained from CitiFinancial without your prior approval, either by initiating a new application or by providing positive proof of identification," the nation's No. 1 financial services company said in the letter.
Yeah, nothing to worry about, just your name, Social Security number, address and probably other information like birthdays floating around there in unknown hands. I mean why would any criminal want that information anyway?
