Investment firm Scottrade has announced that hackers have breached a database containing the personal information of approximately 4.6 million of their clients.
The company is claiming that the affected clients’ social security numbers and various other sensitive types of information doesn’t appear to have been compromised even though that info is contained in the breached database.
Personally, I find that claim to be just a bit optimistic since that would mean the hackers would have simply ignored the most valuable information and limited the data theft to customer contact info. Of course strange things happen every day, but if I were a Scottrade customer I would be quite worried that I could potentially become a victim of identity theft.
It appears that Scottrade must agree with me at least somewhat because they are offering identity protection services to the 4.6 million clients who were affected by the breach.
If you happen to have an account with Scottrade you can learn more about the breach by visiting this page on the company’s website.