Released: September 10, 2008

Countrywide offers credit monitoring after data breach

Source: E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times (Free Registration)

Countrywide Financial Corp. is offering two years of free credit monitoring to customers whose sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, allegedly was stolen from the home lender’s computer files.

In one of the largest data theft cases in years, a former Countrywide employee was arrested Aug. 1 and charged with illegally accessing the firm’s computers for more than two years.

The information was being sold to mortgage brokers to be used as sales leads, federal authorities said in August.

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