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Ameritrade Customer Data Lost

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the it's-going-to-get-worse-before-it-gets-better dept.

Rollie Hawk writes "Continuing the recent trend of customer data blunders in the news, Ameritrade has announced the loss of the personal data of up to 200,000 customers. The suspected cause is a routing error, but not the network kind. The online discount broker admitted that a backup tape of customer account data from 2000 to 2003 has been misplaced. They claim the cause is an error on the part of a shipping company. The tape was identified as missing in February, soon after being shipped. According to spokeswoman Donna Kush, nothing suspicious has been reported. Further blaming the shipping company, she explained that "this was not an Ameritrade Systems issue or a compromise of our technology. This was related to a third party vendor." It's doubtful that current and former customers with exploited information will care how this occurred. She further claimed that Ameritrade "has every reason to believe" that the tape has either been destroyed or is being held by the shipper. There's no word yet on how they arrived at this conclusion."

6 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. In Other News by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny
    HOLLAND, MI (OOP) OSTG has revealed that member data for Slashdot.org, an online technical news site, has been compromised. "At first we thought it was only a network error, until we noticed trends in trolling and moderation making little sense," said Rob Malda, who goes by the nickname of CmdrTaco and was one of the sites founders. "Posts which were clearly uninformative, insightful or interesting were receiving high marks, while better pieces were completely ignored." Further, Malda indicated the loss may have been as high as 100,000 ids and passwords. Which in the wrong hands could tip the opinions of nerds and geeks the world over. In early hours of trading the NASDAQ plummeted 11% on the news and downtown Holland, Michigan was in flames as a mob of panicking and angry posters went on a rampage, before sating itself on chocolate covered espresso beans at the Rocky Peanut Company and pausing to "ooh and ahh" at shiny things in the local Radio Shack window or gaze longingly at the poster for the upcoming Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith outside the local theater. Said Holland mayor, Albert H. McGeehan, "Well, isn't this a fine kettle of tulips!" At press time OSTG had not returned any calls on the matter.
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    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  2. News at 11, [insert company name here] loses data by lxdbxr · · Score: 5, Funny
    At this point, I feel it would be useful to have a list of major companies which have not lost hundreds of thousands of customer records.

    We could then refuse to do business with those companies on the grounds that they were obviously lying.

    --
    -- Nothing unusual happened today
  3. Re:Data loss... or ... data collection? by stinerman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A comment on one of those stories considered that a lot of this data theft/loss has to do with the fact that many companies (Choicepoint) are collecting data on people who are not their customers. There is no incentive for those businesses to keep the data safe.

    As far as customer data loss, it could be any number of factors. I think a lot of it has to do with lax security policy at some of these businesses. Perhaps after this round of scares, others will step up their security.

  4. Re:Data loss... or ... data collection? by Daedala · · Score: 5, Informative

    This isn't a recent spate of customer data loss. It is, as you note, a recent spate of customer data loss reporting. It's mostly due to California Civil Code 1798, formerly known as State Bill 1386. Before we were just quietly leaking like a sieve; now we know we are.

    --
    What I say does not represent the views of my employers, my friends, my cats, or myself.
  5. Re:Question by soconnor99 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The data was encrypted. According to Ameritrade (my broker), special hardware is required to read the information, even if the tape was found.

    All this information was sent in a letter last week.

    As a customer, I feel it was nice for them to keep me in the loop, but I don't feel the least bit threatened.

    Pretty much every company I've ever worked for uses some sort of courier service to move backup tapes off site. If something happens with that courier, after every reasonable precaution was taken by Ameritrade (which it certainly appears it has), it's pretty much out of their control.

    They said what's happened, and what they think the exposure is. What else would you have them do, not send their backup tapes offsite?

  6. Re:Question by Politburo · · Score: 5, Funny

    According to Ameritrade (my broker), special hardware is required to read the information

    That's correct. The tape is unreadable with human eyes.