Tech

Fortune 500 Insurance Company Exposed 885 Million Private Documents

Documents included bank account information, tax records and Social Security numbers. It isn't clear how long these documents were exposed.

Fortune 500 Insurance Company Exposed 885 Million Private Documents
First American Financial
SMS

A major title insurance provider exposed more than 16 years' worth of mortgage records. That's according to an investigation from former Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs.

On Friday he wrote in a blog post that 885 million digitized documents on the First American Financial website had been accessible to anyone with internet access. Those documents included bank account information, tax records and Social Security numbers. It isn't clear how long these documents were exposed.

Krebs said all it took to access a file was one valid URL, which anyone who's ever been emailed a document link by First American would have. Then you could modify the number in the link to see any other document in the system.

First American told Newsy it learned about the flaw Friday and immediately shut down public access to the documents. The company also said it utilizes a "multi-layered security" system that has not indicated a breach. And it hired an outside firm to analyze whether there has been "meaningful unauthorized access" to customer information.