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A Web-site glitch involving The Independent Community Bankers of America’s bank subsidiary exposed personal data about thousands of credit card applicants for more than a year, according to a report. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal on Monday reported that social-media titan Facebook Inc. has asked some of the nation’s largest banks for customer information, including checking-account balances and card transactions, that potentially could be displayed through Facebook’s Messenger platform.
A “Web-site misconfiguration” exposed names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers of thousands of people who applied for credit cards from TCM Bank between early March 2017 and mid-July 2018, the KrebsOnSecurity news site reported Friday. TCM Bank is part of ICBA Bancard, the payments unit of the ICBA trade group that issues credit cards on an agent basis for about 750 local banks.
Krebs cited a letter TCM sent to clients that says the information was uploaded to a Web site managed by an unidentified vendor. An attorney for TCM told Krebs the bank discovered the problem July 16, and it was fixed by the next day. Fewer than 10,000 applicants were affected, the attorney said, and it’s unclear if any fraud has resulted from the data leak. A spokesperson for the Washington, D.C.-based ICBA did not respond to a Digital Transactions News inquiry.
In other data news, The Wall Street Journal said Facebook has asked JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc., and U.S. Bancorp to provide such financial information as current checking- account balances, payment card transactions, and fraud alerts so that bank customers on Facebook could pull that data up through Messenger. Facebook for years has been trying to enhance Messenger’s utility with payments-related offerings.
This latest proposal, however, raises privacy concerns, and one of the banks “has already pulled back,” the Journal said.
