Scottrade Brokerage Firm Hacked, Data for 4.6 Million Customers Stolen

[Karamjit]

This is the third data breach in the last two days

Law enforcement officials contacted Scottrade, a US brokerage firm, and informed them of a data breach in one of their servers, which led to the disclosure of personal details for 4.6 million of their clients.

According to a company press release, the incident seems to have taken place sometime between 2013 and 2014, and only client names and street addresses were stolen.

Other information like SSN (Social Security Number), email addresses, passwords, and such were not touched. Scottrade made a point of saying that customer passwords were fully encrypted at all times.

As a precaution, the company will notify all affected customers of the breach, and even provide identity protection services through AllClear ID, even if the stolen data was trivial.

Scottrade also brought in an external consultant to help strengthen security measures, and will be collaborating with the FBI for finding and apprehending the hackers.

"We have no reason to believe that Scottrade’s trading platforms or any client funds were compromised," said the company. "Although Social Security numbers, email addresses or other sensitive data were contained in the system accessed, it appears that contact information was the focus of the incident. We have not seen any indication of increased fraudulent activity as a result of this incident."

This is the third data breach we reported on in the last two days, after Patreon and Experian (T-Mobile customers) were also hacked yesterday.

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