Student loan company that stole millions from consumers leaks phone calls, SSNs, tax records

guest · Jun 7, 2020

Student loan company that stole millions from consumers leaks sensitive phone calls, SSNs, tax records
June 4, 2020
https://cybernews.com/security/stud...-millions-leaks-phone-calls-ssns-tax-records/

We recently discovered an unsecured Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket that contains more than 55,000 call recordings between loan support workers and American consumers with outstanding student loans.

This open database also contains more than 25,000 PDFs, many of which are scans or photos of proof of income (such as pay receipts or tax returns). Both the proofs of income and call recordings contain the loaners’ social security numbers, among other sensitive personal data.
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The database seems to belong to members of the Student Advocates Group, which an FTC press release named as a student loan debt relief scheme that “bilked millions out of consumers by charging illegal upfront fees and falsely promising to lower or even eliminate consumers’ loan payments or balances.”
Who owns the bucket?
All of the calls reference Equitable Acceptance Corporation as a third-party lender, which led us to believe that they are the owner of the bucket. However, in one of the calls, the loan support agent provides a customer a phone number connected to the Progress Advocates Group LLC (PAG), a company that offers “student loan consolidation services.”
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What’s the impact?
The price of social security numbers in combination with names and other details can grab good prices on the black market. One PCMag article pits it at $60-$80, while our own scans of the black market can put this data at $5 a piece.

With a likely 55,000 social security numbers contained in this bucket, that would put the value of this leak at $275,000-$4.4 million.
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