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Some Wells Fargo customers who opened their accounts in Florida or South Carolina are getting an unpleasant surprise when they open the monthly statement they receive in the mail: At least some of the statement pages inside don’t belong to them. What’s more, it turns that some of their own potentially sensitive account information has been mailed to someone else. Wells Fargo spokeswoman Aimee Worsley wouldn’t say how many customers were affected, but a South Carolina newspaper put the number at 30,000. The misdirected information didn’t include PINs, but it did include other personal information: names, addresses, transaction details and balance information. The biggest concern, Worsley says, is that some customers who receive direct deposit of their wages or benefits may have had their Social Security numbers compromised, since some organizations use that number to identify payees.
As a result, she says, “We’re treating this matter like an information security breach. We believe the risk of compromise to customers’ accounts is low, but we are providing all customers affected by this issue a free year of identity theft protection.” Worsley added that Wells Fargo doesn’t plan to change affected customers’ account numbers.--more-- Time: Moneyland
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