Morgan Stanley Smith Barney Breach Loses Information of 34,000

Retail brokerage Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (MSSB) has notified 34,000 investment clients that some of their data has been lost, including their names, addresses, social security numbers, tax identification numbers and investment income from 2010, according to a report on the Dow Jones newswires.

The information, which was password-protected but not encrypted, was on two compact disks lost in transit from the brokerage to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance on June 8. MSSB waited two weeks and mailed a notification letter to clients on June 24, according to a post Tuesday on Credit.com.

The brokerage said it does not know how the CDs were separated from the rest of the mailing, but said, in a letter to customers, that there's "no evidence that there was any criminal intent here, or actual misuse of this information.”

Account holders whose Social Security Numbers were potentially exposed by the breach are said to be receiving a year of credit monitoring from credit reporters Experian.

MSSB is just the latest in a long line this year of corporations like Citigroup, Sony and Epsilon who’ve experienced similar breaches this year.

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