Latest personal info leak is mortgage-related
Liz Kay reports today that personal information -- including Social Security numbers -- "of about 56,000 Maryland consumers was compromised when several former employees of LendingTree.com, an online mortgage lending exchange, gave three mortgage brokers unauthorized access to company databases."
The story, which you can read HERE, notes that the former employees gave company-database passwords to three California brokerages, which tried to sell loans to several thousand U.S. customers. (Or, as Hugh Williams of the Maryland attorney general's office's identity theft program puts it, they "illegitimately got their information for a legitimate business purpose.")
However, because the databases contained the names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and income information for more than 56,000 Maryland customers who contacted LendingTree from October 2006 to December, the company sent letters to all of them about the security breach.
