JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- The $332 million JAX Federal Credit Union has found itself in the uncomfortable position of having to notify 7,500 members that their CU inadvertently exposed some of their personal data on the Web search engine Google.
The exposure occurred during a data transfer mix-up with a printer, a spokesman for the CU explained, and both the CU and the printer are investigating what happened and how anything similar can be prevented from happening in the future. The CU was sending data to the printer for a mailing of a pre-approved car loan offer, according to Angie Coleman-Rao, vice president of marketing for the CU.
She said Google had been extraordinarily responsive in removing the information as soon as the CU followed the procedure for letting the search engine know it was there. She said the CU was still investigating how the data had wound up on Google and that it was highly unlikely anyone could have used it, even if they had found it.
The credit union has responded to the exposure by offering the impacted members two free years of a subscription to Lifelock, a service that markets itself as the nation's first identity theft prevention service, the CU said.
