Federal law prohibits the publication of your social security number in court filings, which includes anything filed in your bankruptcy case. HSBC apparently broke the law in thousands of bankruptcy cases.
Under the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure (Rule 9037(a) for those of you who want to open up the books), when someone files a document in a bankruptcy case that document may include only the following redacted information by way of personal identifiers: (1) the last four digits of the social-security number and taxpayer-identification number; (2) the year of the individual’s birth; (3) the minor’s initials; and (4) the last four digits of the financial-account number.
Pretty simple stuff, and something every bankruptcy lawyer does automatically.
Not, apparently, the case with HSBC. According to a story at eSecurity Planet:
In documents (available here in PDF format) filed Thursday with the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office, the bank admitted that it failed to completely redact information on forms that were filed between May 1, 2007 and Oct. 17, 2008.
The data compromised by the bug in the imaging software included HSBC credit card account information as well as line-of-credit and mortgage information included in Chapter 13 bankruptcy proof-of-claims filed electronically.
In notification letters the bank began sending out in October to affected customers, it said that some of the information may have been viewable “as a result of the deficiency in the software used to save imaged documents.”
HSBC officials did not reveal the name of the imaging software application it uses to save, store, and file electronic documents.
Customers of HSBC Taxpayer Financial Services, Beneficial New Hampshire, and Household Finance Corporation may have had their mortgage and credit card account information compromised, according to the filing.
My response to this? Oh come on! You’re not even trying to follow the law! A bankruptcy lawyer with $800 worth of standard software can automatically redact information but HSBC – a company that rakes in billions of dollars in the time it takes me to write this post – can’t figure it out?
Someone really should have a heart-to-heart with their IT department. And their General Counsel.
Photo courtesy of Wheezy Jefferson.
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