Security Breach At Euless Mattress Firm
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EULESS (CBSDFW.COM) - A CBS 11 News viewer tipped us off to a breach of security at a local business that can put customers' private financial information at risk.
The viewer told CBS 11 News he took the photos at the dumpster behind a Mattress Firm store at the southwest corner of Glade Road and State Highway 121 in Euless.
Names, addresses, sometimes social security numbers and even credit card numbers. The kind of information that if taken altogether might make the unwary customer vulnerable to identify theft. Some transactions take place as far back as 2002. All on public display for anyone passing by the dumpster, according to our viewer.
Those dumpsters are empty now, having been dumped over the weekend.
Monday afternoon Mattress Firm owned up to the misstep, telling CBS 11 News it should have taken better care discarding customer paperwork that it claims is more than seven years old. It said it was sorry for not following its own clean-out policies. It added, "social security and credit card numbers are no longer included in any of our store-level paperwork and have not been since 2006."
Mattress Firm claims all of the discarded information has been retrieved; still it promises to contact customers and "offer free identity protection services and credit card monitoring for a year."
So far, CBS 11 News has been unable to reach any of the effected customers to see if they're satisfied with Mattress Firm's explanation and promise keep it from happening again, or see if they'll take it up on the credit monitoring offer. Customers effected can contact Mattress Firm at 866.942.3551.
The complete Mattress Firm Statement is as follows from Casey Zuber, the company's director of Communications:
It has come to our attention that during a standard clean-out effort, customer paperwork older than seven years was discarded in a dumpster outside one of our stores in the Dallas area. Unfortunately, some of this paperwork included personally-identifying information such as names, addresses and in some cases credit card or social security numbers.
While we have policies in place to protect sensitive personal information, it is clear that these policies were not clearly communicated in this case, and for that we are truly sorry. We take protecting our customer's personal information very seriously and are working diligently to ensure that we have secure disposal processes going forward. Additionally, social security and credit card numbers are no longer included on any of our store-level paperwork and have not been since 2006.
All of the discarded customer information has been safely retrieved, and we are in the process of contacting all customers affected to personally notify them of the situation and to offer free identity protection services and credit monitoring for a year.
While we are contacting affected customers, if any customer has questions about this issue, they may contact us at 1.866.942.3551.
(©2014 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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