Credit Bureau Security Breached

November 30, 2006

http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=5752352&nav=menu73_2



TransUnion Credit Bureau is investigating who was able to get into their database and illegally download hundreds of people's personal information.

The victims are now being told they'll have to monitor their credit report every month to make sure no one is abusing their identity.

There are three major credit bureaus in this country. They have access to all of our credit information.

But now, some scam companies have gained access to one of those bureaus, TransUnion.

According to the information we have, four different scam companies across the country got more than 1,700 people's credit information after someone obtained the TransUnion log in information from a courthouse in Kingman, Arizona.

With that login password, they were able to randomly get the entire credit histories and social security numbers from hundreds of people. None of those people had anything to do with Kingman, but being a government entity, all the hackers needed was one password to gain information on anyone in the country.

One of those people is Al Balmer from Round Rock. He now has no idea who has his information or what they're doing with it.

"I'm very careful with everything I do involving financial information, credit information and my personal information. Now, somebody's has all of that information, and there's nothing I can do about it. Nothing. Nobody's safe," Balmer said.

TransUnion told KXAN this was not due to a breach of security on their part. However, somehow, somebody with just one password was able to randomly download hundreds of people's information.


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