Update : 2012-01-06 |
Peter Lyon Software
|
|
A "high percentage" of mortgage clients from the National Bank of Canada are being warned to be on watch for suspicious activity on their accounts after a company laptop was stolen in September, 2008.
National Bank spokesman Denis Dube said a laptop containing the bank's mortgage database was stolen Friday from the company's Montreal headquarters. Included in the database were names, addresses and bank chequing account numbers of the clients, but Dube maintains the risk of fraud is low for those affected. "Based on the information that was in the database, the risk is minimal since there was no personal information included, such as date of birth, signature, credit card numbers or social insurance numbers," said Dube, who would not specify the number of people in the database, only to say it was a high percentage of the bank's clients. "There's no cases or reports of problems based on the theft of this database. We don't know if this was stolen for the content or for the laptop itself." The bank is taking preventive steps to protect the clients whose information was in the database, and Dube said clients won't be on the hook for any potential fraud. "We're going to write to each client to be vigilant and report to the bank any unauthorized transactions," he said. "We'll also compensate clients for any related damages and we'll communicate with the different credit companies to put a note about this incident in the file of each affected client." In the theft, the bank cannot tell it is for the content or for the laptop itself. If the goal is content, clients' information is probably exposed already because this laptop's data files are not encrypted by the news. After the laptop has gone, the bank regretted not to encrypt its content early. |