Fortune 500 firm's ex-employee exposes thousands of clients

Ameriprise Financial, a Fortune 500 firm and American financial sector veteran, has informed thousands of customers that an ex-employee's mistake revealed their personal details.

Not every data breach is hacker-made. Sometimes, customer details are exposed in a less malicious way. For example, ex-employees share more about you than they were supposed to.

As the company’s data breach notification letter indicates, Ameriprise Financial found itself in a situation just like this. The company notified its customers that its former financial advisor had left the company and shared more than just the basics.

“Your former Ameriprise Financial advisor left Ameriprise for LPL Financial during the period 2018-2020. In connection with that transition, your former advisor shared certain confidential personal information about you and your account(s) that exceeded the limited scope of information your former advisor was permitted to use for transition purposes,” the company said.

According to data the company submitted to the Maine Attorney General, the former advisor’s actions exposed over 4,600 people in total. Interestingly, Ameriprise put the date for when the breach took place at the start of 2018, while the discovery date is January 2025.

The company’s letter doesn’t specify what other data than names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers were exposed. However, it’s highly likely that the data relates to other personally identifiable information (PII).

We have reached out to the company for comment and will update the article once we receive a reply.

Ameriprise said it has taken additional precautions to avoid similar incidents in the future. Customers impacted by the seven-year-old data leak were also provided with credit monitoring services, free of charge.

The Minneapolis-based Ameriprise Financial is a true veteran in the market, dating back to 1894. The firm was formerly a division of American Express, splitting from the parent company in 2005. Last year, Ameriprise reported revenues exceeding $17 billion and a workforce of more than 13,000 people.