Wells Fargo accidentally sent 1.4 gigabytes of sensitive files to a former financial adviser who subpoenaed the company as part of a defamation lawsuit against one of its current employees.
According to the bank’s lawyer, the files that Wells Fargo’s lawyer sent include a vast trove of confidential information of at least 50,000 customers' names, Social Security numbers and sensitive financial info about tens of thousands of the bank’s wealthiest clients, with investment portfolios worth tens of billions of dollars.
The databases are the collections of the spreadsheets which were handed over to Gary Sinderbrand, the former financial adviser, with no protective orders and no written confidentiality agreement. The lawyer to send him the files, Angela A. Turiano, explained that what happened was a mistake caused by working with an outside vendor.
After realizing the mistake, Ms. Turiano sent him an email describing the disclosure as “inadvertent,” and further wrote, “Obviously this was done in error and we would request that you return the CD asap so that it can be properly redacted.”
“We are continuing to evaluate his legal rights and responsibilities,” Mr. Zeisler wrote in response to her email. “Wells Fargo has not identified what specific documents it asserts were inadvertently exposed.”
This error could be classified as a data breach that "potentially violates a bevy of state and federal consumer data privacy laws that limit the release of personally identifiable customer information to outside parties."