Personal info on 34,000 MSSB clients goes missing in the mail

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, the world's largest brokerage, said compact discs containing tax information of 34,000 clients were lost in transit to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. Clients were notified of the loss in a letter mailed last month, said Jim Wiggins, a spokesman for New York-based Morgan Stanley. The two password-protected CDs, which weren't encrypted, contained some clients' account numbers and Social Security numbers, as well as interest earned on tax-exempt bonds and funds, Wiggins said. “We've seen no evidence of criminal intent or actual misuse of this information,” he said. “We were informed that the package appeared to be intact when it was received at the department, but when it was delivered internally to the intended recipient, the CDs were not there.” According to eWeek.com, the disks included personal identifying information such as clients' Social Security numbers, names and addresses, as well as account and tax identification numbers. Reportedly, after Morgan Stanley was notified that the disks were missing, the bank conducted an “exhaustive search” of all the facilities the package went through. After coming up empty, Morgan Stanley mailed letters to clients June 24 informing them of the loss. For clients whose Social Security numbers were included on the discs, MSSB offered to pay for a year of credit monitoring provided by a third party, Wiggins said. “We are exploring with New York State how to improve the security of this kind of data transmission,” he said. In a recent rating of customer satisfaction with brokerages and wealth managers, MSSB ranked tenth out of a group of thirteen advisory firms. RBC Wealth Management topped the list, which was compiled by J.D. Power & Associates. The website Credit.com was the first to report on the data loss at MSSB. --Bloomberg News--