Experian Lapse Allowed ID Theft Service Access to 200 Million Consumer Records Krebs on Security (03/10/14) Krebs, Brian KrebsOnSecurity detailed last October how a company owned by the U.S. credit bureau Experian sold personal and financial records to a Vietnamese man running an online identity theft service. Brian Krebs decided to look deeper at this incident after the Vietnamese man, Hieu Minh Ngo, plead guilty to running an identity theft service last week. Court records show that Ngo tricked Court Ventures, which was later bought by Experian, into believing he was a private investigator operating out of Singapore. A contractual agreement between Court Ventures and US Info Search gave Ngo direct access to personal and financial data on more than 200 million Americans - information which he made available to his identity theft clients. Ngo reportedly had more than 1,300 customers who used his service between 2007 and February 2013, with an estimated 3.1 million queries on Americans made in the last 18 months of that time frame alone. Krebs commented that his own investigation into Ngos service suggests that those 3.1 million queries could have exposed as many as 30 million records. It is still unclear whether Experian will be penalized as a result of the incident. Ngo, on the other hand, is facing a lengthy prison sentence when he is sentenced on June 16.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 18:30:38 +0000
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