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Talk about scary. We all knew that LowerMyBills.com and LendingTree.com provided for a ‘less-than-ideal’ customer experience as consumers got battered by hundreds of calls from rabid mortgage folks; but this announcement is just plain scary. Employees caught stealing data including consumer social security numbers at Lending Tree.
The advent of ‘lead stealing’ from inside employees has to be more common than this – the economics dictate it. An IT person, a fired employee with access to an account can download all the leads and resell them – obstensibly for mortgage purposes (to brokers/agents outside of the 4 banks promised) but perhaps for much more devious purposes. Opening up credit under false pretenses?
This deserves more attention. The Lead Critic is all over it. Here is the announcement from LendingTree – this should lead to a massive inquiry about the lead generating community in general. And talk about powerless – LendingTree recommends getting a free credit report to check for fraud. What a strong recommendation. I’ve never heard a better way of saying “there’s nothing we can do about it.”
An unqualified disaster if you ask me.
From LendingTree:
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
Note – if you were looking for another reason not to apply for a mortgage online I’m hoping you’ve found it.
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