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Bill Rice is the CEO of Kaleidico, a leader in lead management systems. Prior to founding Kaleidico he was the VP of National Home Equity and the Home Loan Benefit program at Quicken Loans and one of the founding executives of DeepGreen Bank, an Internet-only bank that was one of the first and (at that time) largest buyers of LendingTree leads in early 2000.

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LendingTree Uncovers Breach of Lead Data

April 22nd, 2008 • Related • Filed Under
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As reported on Twitter by an early tipster to the Lead Critic, and quickly confirmed by LendingTree in letters to customers and a website FAQ, LendingTree uncovered a breach of internal security that allowed some mortgage lenders unauthorized access to customer qualification forms. This is LendingTree’s description of the incident:

Recently, LendingTree learned that several former employees may have taken Company passwords and given them to a handful of lenders. These lenders then used the passwords to access LendingTree customer information files, normally available only to LendingTree-approved lenders, to market loans to LendingTree’s customers. The files contained loan request data such as name, address, email address, telephone number, Social Security number, income and employment information.

What are the early reactions to this incident?

Media

Early coverage was light and mundane. Best represented by a local article in the Charlotte Observer.

Competitors

I thought that this press release on identity theft from Bankrate.com was very coincidental (timed?) .

Mortgage Lenders

One current LendingTree lead buyer, felt like it was well handled and would not create much impact.

Another former mortgage lender and lead buyer just felt like it was likely a common occurrence at many notable online lead providers and within the technology departments of lead buying mortgage lenders.

Customers

Some think that consumers rarely change their online behavior because of these incidents. This is my opinion and experience too.

Blogs

There seems to be more concern and angst here than anywhere.

Your Thoughts

Is the concern out of proportion? What are the ramifications, if any? To consumer? To the online lead generation market?

There Are 2 Responses So Far. »

  1. Pingback by As if LendingTree needed more problems… « Internet Marketing Observations on 22 April 2008:

    […] Lead MarketWatch […]

  2. Comment by charlie on 23 April 2008:

    Of course this is important and NOT in any way blown out of proportion. If it is YOUR information that was stolen, whether by Lenders or other thieves, what is the difference?? Those lenders KNEW damn well that what they were doing was, at least, improper, and at worst, ILLEGAL.

    Lending Tree is simply a LARGE scale lead gen site and nothing more, so this probably won’t affect online marketing. There is no way to stop employees from taking things. Even the US Government (lol) can’t stop spying and the theft of information.

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