Countrywide employee discloses personal information of mortgage holders...

[Union Thug]

I just received this letter (aka "security alert") in the snail mail:

"Dear <me>,

We are writing to inform you that we recently became aware that a Countrywide employee (now former) may have sold unauthorized personal information about you to a third party. Based on a joint investigation conducted by Countrywide and law enforcement authorities, it was determined that the customer information involved in this incident included your name, address, social security number, mortgage loan number, and various other loan and application information."


Geez, thanks Countrywide.

Oh and fuck you.

[kurth_]

1. Lovely

Incompetent assholes.

[NC_Nurse]

2. I have 2 mortgages with them - thus 2 letters from them. I put a fraud alert

on my files at the credit bureaus. What a bunch of crap. Sigh.:(

[Union Thug]

3. I've been sitting here thinking about all the info on my loan app and

other documents in their possession.... I'll do the fraud alert, too.

[NC_Nurse]

4. Take them up on the free credit monitoring service too. It OUGHT to cost

them.

[Union Thug]

6. Yes, I plan to. Thanks!

[davidwparker]

9. what is involved in doing a fraud alert? I have my first mortgage with them

[alstephenson]

5. My friend at work received a similar letter, but it wasn't from Countrywide.

Is there some kind of new law requiring them to inform possible victims of identity-theft, or some kind of scam??? The information appeared to be legitimate (correct website referrals, etc.), but ???

[Union Thug]

7. That's a great question. Makes me wonder

about how these mortgage companies are set up. Is it possible that a multiple companies could be affected through a single security violation?

[yellowdogintexas]

10. interesting point. Countrywide and many of the other large lenders service

loans that they don't actually own or originate. These are loans from banks, small lenders etc. that do not have a mortgage servicing department. So you call the C/S number, they answer it "Joe's Mortgage" but it is a Countrywide or Wells Fargo or whatever employee working that special queue for the third party lenders. They will never even mention the company they actually work for only the name on the loan...it is a different toll free number, address, website , everything, but the information is in the main system of the servicing company.

So a breach by a Countrywide employee of data from CHL's main system could actually impact more than one company.

edited to add: loans get floated out in the brokerage market and may be only temporarily in the hands of a particular company, so that data could also be in the main system of more than one lender

[yellowdogintexas]

8. Sears abruptly closed my MasterCard and replaced with a new one, never said

exactly why but the language in the letter implied that they had one of those lost CD moments and decided to err on the side of caution. I had the new card before I actually knew the old one was canceled, it happened to be an inactive period for me and that card.

[onethatcares]

11. Dear Countrywide,

Thank you very much for verifying the fact that an employee of your firm(now former) may have sold unauthorized personal information about me to third party.

As soon as the investigation is complete, please inform me of the outcome, as I have plans of filing suit myself against your company for whatever legal reasons my attorney can think of.

If you would like to forego such a lawsuit, please furnish myself and my co-signers of any loan I have from you, a quit claim deed, a paid in full mortgage statement, and a check for $35.00.

Thanx:woohoo:

[Union Thug]

12. Funny you should say that...I wonder what their liability is for

such breaches?

[onethatcares]

13. since I'm not a lawyer or landshark of any type,

I don't know. But I did stay in a motel 6 a long time ago. Peace.