For the sixth time in three years personal information has been stolen Wells Fargo & Co. But this time, it was employees, and not customers, who were affected by the security breach.
A computer and a disk full of employee data was stolen from the car of an outside auditor working with Wells, the lender confirmed to MortgageDaily.com in an e-mail.
Wells notified employees in an Aug. 28 letter.
“There is no indication the information has been misused or accessed,” Wells spokeswoman Melissa Morey said in the e-mail. “Nevertheless, we have sent a letter to inform each affected team member, and are providing a free credit monitoring service to them.”
Wells was following IRS regulations by allowing the auditor to review the company’s health care plans for employees, including those who work in mortgage lending. The auditor, which the company did not name, is no longer working for Wells.
The information contained names and Social Security numbers of some employees as well as other “confidential information,” including information about prescription drug claims and health insurance claims, Morey said.
It was not revealed how many of the company’s more than 15,000 employees were affected.
Morey did not say when or where the theft took place. She did say that the auditor contacted the police and that both law enforcement and the company’s corporate security are investigating.
“We sincerely apologize that this situation has occurred and for any worry or inconvenience it may cause our team members,” she said.
Wells has had other recent instances of information being stolen.
In May, the company alerted customers of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage after a computer being transported by a shipping company that was not identified reported was reported stolen.
The computer contained customer’s names, addresses, social security numbers and mortgage loan account numbers.
Computers with customer data were stolen four other times in 2004 and 2003.
On Aug. 28 of this year — the same day employees were notified about the latest theft — Wells announced an upgrade of its online security platform that is “designed to give customers and businesses even more protection in the fight against Internet fraud.”
“These are not the last of the upgrades,” Jim Smith, executive vice president of Wells’ Internet Channel and Products, said in a statement. “They are additional enhancements to our security in an ever-changing process to give the customer the utmost protection possible.”
Though Internet security measures would not have mattered in the theft of hardware, Wells said it does have at least two layers of security for data “making it difficult to access the information.”
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