(no subject)
Nov. 27th, 2004 03:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselkingThe Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has been faxing confidential information about hundreds of its customers to a scrapyard operator in West Virginia for more than three years, and he can't get them to stop.
Wade Peer says he has been overwhelmed since 2001 by internal CIBC fund transfer request forms containing the social insurance numbers, home addresses, phone numbers and detailed bank account data of several hundred bank customers.
"Had I been a bad guy, I could have got credit cards in their name, I could have assumed their identity. I could have transferred money out of their bank accounts and they'd never know that it happened," Mr. Peer said from his 12-hectare scrapyard in the rolling hills of West Virginia.
He said the fax traffic from CIBC prevented him from communicating with his customers and forced him to shut one of his businesses.
Mr. Peer said that he alerted CIBC to the error in 2001, but continues to receive the faxes, including one he got on Monday. They originate, he said, at CIBC branches from Vancouver to Halifax and are apparently intended to be transmitted to what the bank calls its central faxing unit.
"We contacted them but we couldn't get the time of day. [They said] 'Sorry, not our problem.' They were rude and hung up the telephone," Mr. Peer said.
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Quoth Mike Hoye:
"I don't know if there's one word to describe what happens when a major corporation gets gang-raped by an army of extremely excited lawyers set in the twin pursuits of justice and fat sacks of bank money while the national privacy commissioner is nearby cracking a bullwhip, waving a Stetson around his head and yelling "Yeehah!", but if I did, this is exactly where I would use that word. I bet there's one really long German word for it that they don't use much."
Wade Peer says he has been overwhelmed since 2001 by internal CIBC fund transfer request forms containing the social insurance numbers, home addresses, phone numbers and detailed bank account data of several hundred bank customers.
"Had I been a bad guy, I could have got credit cards in their name, I could have assumed their identity. I could have transferred money out of their bank accounts and they'd never know that it happened," Mr. Peer said from his 12-hectare scrapyard in the rolling hills of West Virginia.
He said the fax traffic from CIBC prevented him from communicating with his customers and forced him to shut one of his businesses.
Mr. Peer said that he alerted CIBC to the error in 2001, but continues to receive the faxes, including one he got on Monday. They originate, he said, at CIBC branches from Vancouver to Halifax and are apparently intended to be transmitted to what the bank calls its central faxing unit.
"We contacted them but we couldn't get the time of day. [They said] 'Sorry, not our problem.' They were rude and hung up the telephone," Mr. Peer said.
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Quoth Mike Hoye:
"I don't know if there's one word to describe what happens when a major corporation gets gang-raped by an army of extremely excited lawyers set in the twin pursuits of justice and fat sacks of bank money while the national privacy commissioner is nearby cracking a bullwhip, waving a Stetson around his head and yelling "Yeehah!", but if I did, this is exactly where I would use that word. I bet there's one really long German word for it that they don't use much."
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-27 07:23 am (UTC)I really shouldn't.
But I can't stop.