Former Employee of ABM Amro Mortgage Causes Leak of 5,000 Social Security Numbers

Unbelievable! Apparently, a former employee of ABN Ambro Mortgage Group had taken a spreadsheet of 5,000 Social Security Numbers and other personal details about customers of the mortgage company and placed it on his personal computer which was then conveniently included in an online file-sharing network, i.e., BearShare and LimeWire are some examples. As a customer of ABN Amro I would like to say a big "you fu#$ing assholes". Thanks for the tight security standards your company follows. Wow, now I'm praying that I'm not one of the 5,000 and have to spend the next week checking mail for any letter.

Ok, rant over now. Seriously though, it goes to show that corporate security standards are as good as the employees that abide by them. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but I would really like to know why the mortgage company felt it ok for any social security to be unencrypted and stored in spreadsheets. I would like one good reason why this data would need to be available to anyone? Please, throw me a bone here...anyone know?

This is also another example of you have no idea who has what personal information about you. You do business with a bank, credit card, loan company or anyone else, chances are, there are people looking at your data and you are just one bone-head away from having your identity stolen. Ok, might be a bit mellow dramatic here...but it pisses me off.


Mortgage data leaked over file network