A document containing the personal information of 9,400 Schwab Retirement Plan Services customers across the country, including 2,600 in the tri-state, was accidentally emailed to someone not intended to receive it, the company says.
Charles Schwab sent letters to the affected customers this week notifying them of the information breach that occurred Aug. 25. The company said it took that long to alert customers because it had to conduct an investigation to determine the scope of the incident and the potential risk.
In the letter, the company said a Schwab Retirement Plan Services employee accidentally emailed personal information from the customers' 401K accounts to someone else. Charles Schwab said the spreadsheet with the personal information was deleted.
That's not good enough for customers like Joy, who didn't want to give her last name.
"It gives me no satisfaction to know it was deleted because 'deleted' in the 21st century does not mean deleted. So I will always be concerned," she said.
"I will always have to be worried that someday someone will use my information so it is a big deal to me," she added.
In a statement, Charles Schwab said: "We do not believe there is risk that the information has been or will be used inappropriately; however, we have offered all impacted participants complimentary credit monitoring, and we continue to evaluate steps we can take to prevent such incidents in the future."
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But Joy thinks the process should be streamlined.
"Credit cards are affected by this, banks, loans are affected by this, so maybe someone should set up a process where all the agencies are working together so once this happens, boom, something goes into place where everyone is notified," she said.
