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There is a serious threat to the data of customers in organizations worldwide. Apparently this is the data that contains information about their names, ages, social security number etc. As IT systems become an inherent part of organization’s assets with that we are also witnessing increase in incidents reporting data loss. The impact of this data loss is huge leading to financial implications.
The latest casualty are customers of Countrywide financial. The disturbed customers of Countrywide Financial have filed a class-action lawsuit over the 2008 data breach that enabled company insiders to steal and sell their personal information. According to a Courthouse News Service report, the class-action lawsuit on behalf of 16 plaintiffs seeks $20 million in damages, plus punitive damages.
The data theft was originally attributed to a single employee working over a two-year-period has now exposed tens of thousands of customer records. According to the lawsuit alleges that Countrywide Financial employees have stolen and sold “tens of thousands, or millions” of customers’ personal financial information.
While going through one of the news-stories, we discovered the letter that was sent to the customers. Here is a copy of the letter:
According to the lawsuit the defendants were slow to admit the massive breaches of confidentiality, and offered little or not support. The complaint stated, “Countrywide delayed several months before informing their customers.” “Finally, Countrywide informed only certain of their customers by letter and offered in settlement to refer the customers/borrowers to counseling, when it was Countrywide that needed to review and repair its internal procedures.”
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- Countrywide settlement over ID theft gets initial OK (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
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The settlement does provide up to $50,000 coverage due to Identity theft, but what you did not mention is the total Countrywide will cover — $5,000,000. The claims are first come first serve basis and once the total is gone…that’s it. So…how many people were affected, let’s see over 10 million? The total value of $5 million is an insult.
The settlement has gone through preliminary approval by a judge in the court of Kentucky. The notice of this proposed settlement has gone out. The fairness of this proposed settlement will be determined on Jul 19, 2010. According to this settlement, if you don’t speak up you agree to the terms and will not be able to claim losses due to the data theft nor sue Countrywide at a later date.
I looked over some thing very much the same to your “Lawsuit filed against Countrywide | Alertsec Xpress Data Security Blog” post at a different site I frequent… in any case, I feel apple is typically overrated but has some excellent products too.