Over the Memorial Day weekend, First American Financial, one of the country’s largest title insurers, reportedly exposed more than 885 million sensitive documents online.The documents, stored on First American’s website, firstam.com, contained bank and/or credit union account numbers, bank and/or credit union statements, mortgage records, tax documents, wire transfer receipts, Social Security numbers and photos of drivers’ licenses. Information as far back as 2003 was discovered to have been included in the documents that were breached. No authentication was required to read these documents.
First American stated that it rectified the situation once it was made aware of it. The company said it has hired an outside forensic firm to investigate whether any customer information was compromised due to the security flaw.
According to First American, it does not appear that there was any large-scale access to the information, but if that changes, First American stated the organization will notify consumers and provide credit-monitoring services. The company has set up a webpage it will use to provide updates on the security breach, located at https://www.firstam.com/incidentupdate.
If you've done business with First American at any point since 2003, this could potentially apply to you, especially if you have ever been sent a document link via email by First American. It may be best to consider freezing your credit reports at the three major credit bureaus for the time being. Doing so will prevent any unauthorized person from taking out loans or starting a line of credit in your name without your permission.
Protecting member information is our utmost priority and a primary duty of Century Federal Credit Union. As such, the credit union employs data safety and cyber security measures, and also provides information to our members on ways to combat cyber fraud. We suggest you view our Member Data Security page at www.CenFedCU.org/DataSecurity for more information and guidance on protecting yourself against identity theft, cyber fraud and criminal scams.