The lost tape was returned to ABN-AMRO a month after it went missing..My Dad got a letter stating his was one of the accounts afftected.

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Michigan business
ABN AMRO data lost
Homeowners should monitor credit reports

December 17, 2005

Email this Print this BY SUSAN TOMPOR

FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
What happens now

Consumers with mortgages through LaSalle or its Michigan predecessor, Standard Federal Bank, will receive a letter from ABN AMRO mortgage.



They will be able to enroll in a free credit-monitoring service through TransUnion for 90 days. Once they enroll, they would be notified of any activity on their credit report.



For information, consumers can go to www.info.mortgage.com.



Customers in Michigan also may call 866-732-6555. You will need to have your mortgage number available in order for the customer representative to assist you.
If you have a home mortgage through LaSalle Bank or the former Standard Federal Bank, look out for a letter from your lender warning you about a missing computer tape -- a tape that includes your Social Security number and payment history.

Friday, ABN AMRO Mortgage Group, a subsidiary of LaSalle Bank Corp., announced that a computer tape containing data for about 2 million mortgage customers had been lost.

About 320,000 homeowners in Michigan would have been included on that tape.

The homeowners could have gotten an ABN AMRO mortgage through LaSalle Bank branches, the former Standard Federal Bank, outside mortgage brokers or ABN AMRO's own Mortgage.com.

Thomas M. Goldstein, chairman and chief executive officer of ABN AMRO Mortgage Group in Chicago, said the lender deeply regrets the mix-up but has seen no signs of identity theft or misuse of the information at this point.

"I regret that this has occurred. I feel terrible for the customers that this impacts," Goldstein said. He noted that his name and his wife's name are on that tape as well, because they, too, have mortgages through the bank.

The computer tape doesn't contain credit card numbers or any information that anyone could use immediately to buy goods.

But you never want anyone to get access to your Social Security number, because that information could help someone open fraudulent credit card accounts or other loans.

So it is important that consumers sign up for the bank's offer of a credit-monitoring service to track any odd activity.

The tape was lost last month. Courier DHL picked up the computer tape from the mortgage company's processing center on Nov. 18. The package didn't arrive as it was supposed to do at the Experian credit bureau in Allen, Texas.

Goldstein said, at this point, it does not seem that fraud was involved in the loss of the tape.

"By all appearances, it seems it is just sitting someplace in a box. My guess is, one day, when no one cares, we will find it," he said.

Through the last year, other lenders have reported such mix-ups. In June, CitiFinancial, the consumer-finance division of Citigroup Inc., notified 3.9 million U.S. customers that computer tapes containing their Social Security numbers and payment histories also were lost in transit.

After problems elsewhere, Goldstein said, ABN AMRO began an extensive project to redo the way it handles such data and make things more secure. It was converting to an electronic format that wouldn't involve courier services. And that new system for mortgage data being sent to the credit bureaus was set to go this month -- a month after the tape was lost on its way to Texas.

DHL lost a package?  Inconcievable.

I'm enrolling but I guess it's been upped to a year. I'm keeping the letter filed away and if I an a victim of ID fraud I'll sue the bastards, as they are responsible and they damn well know it. Damn bank screws up just after they take a frenchy name. Coincidence? I think not.

I got that letter yesterday.

Fuckers.

I got the same letter. Unfortunately when I tried to sign up it said I had already signed up, so I have to call 1-800-goto-hell and talk to the nice Indian people to get my account set up.

Draw down on them!

File a written police report and mail a written warning to his credit card company(ies) that he might get robbed electronically because his information was compromised.