A Letter You Never Want to Receive
Turns out there are things you can get in the mail from your lender that are even less desirable than bills. Just ask LendingTree's mortgage customers from October 2006 through early 2008, who received the following surprise this week:
April 21, 2008
Dear LendingTree Customer:
We want you to know that some loan request forms our customers sent to LendingTree may have been seen by lenders without our consent. These lenders then used the forms to market their own mortgage loans to our customers. While we don't believe that the forms were used for any other purpose, we want you to know what happened and what we did to correct this situation, as well as what you can do to monitor your credit records.
What Happened and What We Did
Recently, LendingTree learned that several former employees may have helped a handful of mortgage lenders gain access to LendingTree's customer information by sharing confidential passwords with the lenders. When we learned of this situation, we quickly contacted the authorities, and LendingTree is helping with their investigation. We promptly made several system security changes. We also brought lawsuits against those involved.
Based on our investigation, we understand that these mortgage lenders used the passwords to access LendingTree's customer loan request forms, normally available only to LendingTree-approved lenders, to market loans to those customers. The loan request forms contained data such as name, address, email address, telephone number, Social Security number, income and employment information. We believe these lenders accessed LendingTree's loan request forms between October 2006 and early 2008.
What You Can Do
Again, we don't believe any identity theft or fraudulent financial activity resulted from this situation. However, we suggest you get a free credit report. Look for any accounts you didn't open and/or inquiries from creditors that you didn't initiate. If you see anything you don't understand, contact the credit bureau. If you see anything suspicious, you may want to file a fraud alert with the bureaus. For more information on how to do this, please refer to LendingTree's Guide to Protecting Your Credit and Identity.
Where to Get More Information
We regret any inconvenience and apologize for any unwanted mortgage calls you may have received. For more information about this situation, and for more information on what you can do, please refer to the attached Questions & Answers.
Sincerely,
R.L. Harris
That $1,500 mortgage bill doesn't seem so bad anymore, huh?
Here's what Brian Cleary, the vice president of marketing at Aveksa, an information security and access management provider, told me about the LendingTree problem:
"First of all, they have an access policy failure. These are former employees—how can those user accounts to critical customer data still be active? Those should be shut down. So, their access to all of the information and resources should be revoked on the day of their termination. I think, secondly, these things occur when you don't have good access review and certification processes in place.
"So, you can have policies, but if the policies live in a three-ring binder, and they are not put into practice as daily operating procedures—through some degree of automation—the chances of things like this occurring are pretty high."
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Reader Comments
Lending Tree Troubles
Below is a letter I sent to my Senator.
To put it bluntly, Lending tree must be stopped.
The only edit in this letter is the removel of our last names.
To Senator Ensign,
Please be advised that Mortgage lending Co LENDING TREE due to their own negligence has had maybe 100 of thousands of Nevadians credit files stolen. It seems their own employees sold my wife's and god knows how many people credit files to California Mortgage Co, and whoever else would give them a buck for it.
When I called them up after recieving a letter from Lending Tree that my beautiful wife had her credit file stolen, which includes name,dob,ss#,job salary and history address etc.
They refused to give me any info and refused to delete my wifes info citing federal regulations they could not produce. They also refused to give me either attorney's name or phone # and said to me this is not our problem let it go.
They did say however that to be safe I should get a credit report and hire a credit monitoring service at my own expense for the next 2 years.I should tell you they hung up on me twice, WELL NIKITA, hung up on me twice.Saying to me this is not LENDING TREE'S CONCERN.
I don't need to tell you the ramafications of ones COMPLETE IDENTITY being stolen.
The sad part is we didn't even use Lending Tree cause of their outrageous rates.We bought a small place outright.
Also my mom called them up yesterday(yes mother's day) and the rep she spoke to claimed she never heard of any files being sold or the facT that under fraud there is a class action suit against LENDING TREE.
Please Senator realize just how big this is and do something. In the state of Maryland alone 56 thousand people are affected. How many in Nevada are affected???????
I am 42 and my wonderful wife is 40 and at our ages repairing this could takes us to our deaths.
One lady had 46 inquires in a 3 month peroid destoying her good credit.
I am or was recieving 3-5 phone calls a week from MORTGAGE LENDING company's until about 2 weeks ago, some still on my caller ID.
Please help and alert people before it's too late which by now maybe already.
Thankyou for your time,
Amy
Christopher
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LendingTree
The number of times they sell your personal information leads to privacy breaches as well. You are led to believe that when you apply with them that you are applying to a "bank". In fact, your application (name, address, social security number, phone, fax, email) is SOLD to mortgage brokers, lenders and loan originators all over the country.
The only qualification you need to purchase a lead from Lending Tree is the ability to PAY for it.
One lead is sold to MANY. I have had people tell me that I am the 10th caller from thier one inquiry.
When you apply with LT then you are exposing your personal information to a large number of people and you don't know who. I don't believe there is any amount of security they can institute to stop information sharing.
The public should be made aware of this PRIOR to applying with them.
Apr 25, 2008 12:47:14 PM [permalink] [report comment]