Like Oh. My. Gosh! Citibank mails 600,000 letters with exposed social security numbers

March 15, 2010 – 5:30 pm

You may remember those commercials from a few years back that featured people voiced by the thieves who stole their identities. They had obvious misplaced voices that happily talked about all the ways they were ripping off the pictured victim.

“Twenty thousand bucks to complete my robot. My girl robot,” laughs the geeky male voice coming from the twenty-something woman sitting in the pedicure booth. “This is going to be the best prom ever,” she/he continues.

In another commercial the middle-aged male sitting in a recliner tells his story in a teenage valley girl voice: “Then I hit the mall and there in the windows was this sexy little outfit and oh my gosh I just had to have it. Fifteen hundred dollars for a leather bustier? I didn’t care. It lifts and separates!”

The commercials were for Citibank for their “no fee” identity theft measures that they offered with new credit accounts. And while the commercials were quite funny, none of the over 600,000 customers who’s social security numbers were printed on the outside of an envelope and mailed to them are laughing.

In late January of this year, Citibank mailed end of the year tax statements to their customers. Due to what Citibank is calling a “processing error,” 600,000 of those had social security numbers visible to the world. The letter, which obviously had the name and address of the recipients, would be a goldmine to any potential identity thieves. Still, Citibank regarded the error as being “little or no risk” to their customers. It’s hard to see exposed social security numbers as little risk to people in today’s identity theft ridden landscape.

To make up for the error Citibank has offered credit monitoring to the customers effected for 180 days.

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