It’s not looking good for Latitude Financial services in the wake of a data breach which last week they advised affected some 328,000 customers. Today, in a statement to the ASX, the company has advised that “regrettably our review has uncovered further evidence of large-scale information theft affecting customers (past and present) and applicants across Australia and New Zealand“
There are some key words in there that are alarming. “Past” and “Applicants”. That means that even if you applied for but were not approved or didn’t follow through with finance, they have your records and a hacker may now have them too.
Latitude say they are “working urgently to identify the total number of customers and applicants affected and the type of personal information that has been stolen“
Unfortunately, it appears they have no idea yet just how many people are affected, nor what data the hackers have.
Critically, in their first announcement, Latitude made a point about around 100,000 Drivers Licences being involved, and EFTM can confirm this is more than just Licence Numbers, it is a copy of the licence, or a photo of the licence that was used during the application process. That number grew to 330,000 with an update from the company two days ago.
This means that the hacker could have both your licence number and the card number, the two Identifying numbers that are used to apply for credit or finance and the link of them both is the issue that Optus was able to avoid after State authorities confirmed the Licence number alone was less of a risk.
Latitude has published additional information on their customer help pages online.
These pages confirm that Latitude is working with IDCARE to offer protection to it’s customers, and that if your ID documents are stolen, they will “help them replace identification documents, where necessary, at no cost.”
Of the ID Documents affected, and there are going to be many – currently Latitude say 96% are Drivers Licences or Licence numbers, 4% are copies of passports or passport numbers and 1% are Medicare numbers.
While Latitude is working hard to establish the details of this breach, they also need to work fast to advise just how many people are affected.
