follow-up: Customers Sue Countrywide Financial Over Theft And Sale Of Personal Data

[security curmudgeon <jericho () attrition org>]

Original incident:
http://datalossdb.org/incidents/1073-employee-sells-customer-list-exposing-names-and-social-security-numbers

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>

http://www.darkreading.com/database_security/security/privacy/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224201969

By Tim Wilson
DarkReading
April 07, 2010

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, originally attributed to a single employee working over a 
two-year-period, exposed tens of thousands of customer records.

The lawsuit alleges that Countrywide Financial employees stole and sold 
"tens of thousands, or millions" of customers' personal financial 
information, according to the news report.

The suit claims the defendants do not dispute that customers' private 
financial information was disseminated. It seeks to find out "whether the 
dissemination was intended as a plan or scheme, or was intentional; [and] 
whether any of the defendants was simply aiding and abetting, rather than 
an architect of the plan to disseminate the personal information."

[...]
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