If you applied for a job at Bank of the West prior to December 19, 2013, your personal information, including your Social Security number, driver’s license number, and date of birth, may be in the hands of a hacker. The bank isn’t certain whether personal information was acquired by unauthorized individuals who were able to access a retired Internet application database, but is offering those affected free credit monitoring services.
See the bank’s email notification and letter (pdf).
Update: Their notification to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office can be found here (pdf).
Update 2: Their notification to Maryland.
I got one of these today, on February 10. The letter says they discovered the breach on Dec. 19. That was 2 months ago.
Does it normally take that long for companies to notify people of a breach? That seems like more than enough time for a hacker to have fun with the stolen information.
Although there’s a trend towards much much faster notification than this, depending on the circumstances of the breach, it can take two months – or even longer.
I also received the letter. I love how they said that they will give us one year of First Watch I.D. then said that after the following year when they are no longer providing me with this service that they listed three of the credit checking sites but to stagger them four months between each one to get the one year benefit…. these are FREE sites. I think that Bank of the West should pay for a I.D. theft for the rest of my life. To have my social security number and drivers license possibly stolen makes me fell very uneasy and a constant fear of threat. One year…. that’s just ridiculous.
I got one of these letters too, I was thinking this letter could be a scam as well?
I received a letter and conducted a live chat with a Bank of the West service representative. She confirmed that it was true and referred me to the toll free number.
I received this email as well. I thought it was a scam. I don’t even remember applying for the sf bank of the west office. just in case, would it be safe to look into my credit report for it?
I’m of the school of thought “better safe than sorry,” so yes, you should check – either by taking advantage of the free credit reports you’re entitled to each year or by signing up for the service you’ve been offered which would give you more than just a one-time check.
I have a feeling that using their free yearly offer will mean I cannot sue in the future if this information does get used by the hackers. I’m weary to start the year of monitoring! I’ll just check every 4 months. I applied in 2004 so having this information in storage is extremely unnerving.