Bank Loses 3.9M Customers' Data

CitiFinancial Says UPS Lost It; No Evidence Of Theft Or Fraud

(CBS/AP)  The missing CitiFinancial customer data is the latest in a series of data losses or breaches that have forced financial institutions and other data collectors to warn customers that their personal information may be at risk.

Last month, media and entertainment company Time Warner Inc. said that computer backup tapes containing data on 600,000 individuals were lost by an outside data storage firm.

The data covered current and former employees going back to 1986, as well as some of their dependents and beneficiaries, the company said. It did not include personal data on Time Warner customers, the company said.

Also in May, more than 100,000 customers of Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., both headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, were notified that their financial records may have been stolen by bank employees and sold to collection agencies. And in April, Ameritrade Holding Corp., a leading online discount broker, said it had informed some 200,000 current and former customers that a backup computer tape with personal information had been lost.

Kevin Kessinger, executive vice president of Citigroup's Global Consumer Group and president of Consumer Finance North America, told The Associated Press that the tapes left CitiFinancial on May 2 and were discovered missing on May 20. Senior managers were notified May 24.

The Secret Service was told of the loss of the tapes on May 27 and began investigating.

Kessinger says notification of customers was delayed at the request of the Secret Service.

U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and co-chairman of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, said the CitiFinancial data loss underscores the need for Congress to regulate information brokers.

"This episode of identity data loss is, unfortunately, becoming all too common," Markey said in a statement. "To address this problem, I have introduced legislation - the "Information Protection and Security Act" - which would subject information brokers to federal regulation by the Federal Trade Commission and require such brokers to comply with a set of new fair information practice rules."

"Clearly we regret that this happened with our customers," Kessinger said. "We're trying to be upfront - to communicate and to talk about what the issues are."