Last week, there were reports that detailed First American Financial, a real estate title insurance corporation, leaked hundreds of millions of files related to real estate transactions. Here's what you need to know about this incident and how it could affect you.
WHO: First American Financial Corporation, a California based multi-billion dollar title insurance and settlement service corporation that works closely with real estate developers and mortgage lenders.
WHAT THE INCIDENT WAS: A link to a file on their website could be used to allow virtually anyone to see any file hosted on the server by modifying the file number in the URL. Files were numbered in order from "000000075" upwards, and dated from 2003 all the way to recent/present day transactions.
SIZE: Approximately 885 million files could have been viewed, downloaded, or accessed, all containing varied sensitive information related to home buying, selling, bank accounts, credit status, social security numbers, and more.
HOW IT AFFECTS YOU: While this isn't a breach in the traditional sense (where a malicious actor actively exploited software or compromised user accounts to access this information), it does classify as a data exposure where it COULD have happened any time between now and even as far back as March of 2017.
Though First American is a Californian company, they often work with many real estate companies throughout the United States and, as such, your data could end up on that website if any third parties provided it to them. Given the sheer size of the leak and how sensitive the data leaked was, it would be prudent to keep a close eye on all accounts and beware of potential phishing attacks related to the information.
To read more, click HERE to see the full article about this breach.
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