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If you're one of millions of Americans with a mortgage, consider this - your mortgage company holds much of your privacy/identity info. Yet, have you ever wondered if your information is safe with them?

According to this article, three spreadsheets with social security numbers of over 5000 customers have been iinadvertantly leaked by a former employee of the ABN AMRO Mortgage Group. The problem was traced to the use of a peer to peer (P2P) file sharing tool called BearShare. Here's an excerpt from the article explaining what happened -

Tiversa Inc., a Pittsburgh company that offers data-leakage protection services, traced the origins of the ABN data to a Florida computer with the BearShare software installed..With such peer-to-peer sharing systems, files are obtained directly from another user's hard drive rather than a central hub like traditional Web sites. As a result, once a file begins to circulate, copies can sit on computers all over the world, ready to be grabbed by other users.

Although this data compromise was unintentional, P2P tools are increasingly becoming the weapon of choice in the arsenal of identity thieves. Most companies are clueless about this threat...and unfortunately, some of these companies hold our privacy data

Posted by andreyee in Privacy/Information Theft |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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