Citigroup reports customer files lost
By Eileen Alt Powell
Associated Press
NEW YORK — CitiFinancial, the consumer finance division of Citigroup Inc., said yesterday it has begun notifying some 3.9 million U.S. customers that computer tapes containing information about their accounts — including Social Security numbers and payment histories — have been lost.
Citigroup, which is based in New York, said the tapes were lost by the courier UPS Inc. in transit to a credit bureau.
The bank said the tapes contained information about both active and closed accounts at CitiFinancial's branch network. It said they did not contain information from CitiFinancial Auto, CitiFinancial Mortgage or any other Citigroup business.
The statement said that CitiFinancial "had no reason to believe that this information has been used inappropriately, nor has it received any reports of unauthorized activity."
Norman Black, a spokesman for Atlanta-based UPS, confirmed that the tapes were missing.
"Despite an exhaustive search for this package, we've been unable to find it," Black said.
It was 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, N.C., 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 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, said 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.
U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and co-chairman of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, said the CitiFinancial data loss underscored 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."
Kessinger said the bank's letter encouraged consumers to review activity on all their accounts to make sure nothing suspicious was occurring. He said CitiFinancial also was arranging for all affected customers to sign up free of charge with a credit monitoring service for 90 days. And, he said, if a customer is victimized, he or she will get free help from Citigroup's Identity Theft resolution service.
Customers who are concerned about identity theft should visit a local CitiFinancial branch or call (866) 452-2484.
