LEWISTON — Somewhere in Farmington, Connecticut, is a man who may never know how lucky he is to still be in possession of his money.
On Friday night, a Lewiston man trying to manage his own bank account was inexplicably given access to a complete stranger’s banking information.
“I just wanted to log on to my account to see if there’s money to go Christmas shopping this weekend,” said Bryan Brito, a Key Bank customer. “It brings me to this strange person’s account.”
Brito could see it all. Checking account, savings account, transfers, not to mention the private information connected to the Connecticut man’s account.
“I have access to everything,” Brito said. “It’s frightening.”
What he found more frightening was the response he got after calling Key Bank to report the problem.
“They told me, ‘Don’t worry. Just don’t worry.’ That’s all I can get out of them,” Brito said. “I sat on hold for 45 minutes for, supposedly, a supervisor who said, ‘Don’t worry. We’re taking care of it.’ I can look at a Connecticut man’s bank statements for the past 10 years. How is that a ‘don’t worry’ situation?”
The Sun Journal didn’t have any better luck. A call to a 24-hour hotline was answered by a representative who passed on a number for the Key Bank Corporate Headquarters Customer Complaint Resolution Department. Calls to that number, and to a third number for bank executive relations, were not answered.
A message left at the Complaint Resolution Department was not returned.
Brito said his concerns were many. If he was able to access a stranger’s bank account, he wondered, who was to say that some stranger wasn’t accessing his?
The Key Bank representative Brito talked to fail to reassure him.
“They said, ‘If someone calls us who has access to your account, we’ll take care of it,'” Brito said. “I said, ‘If it’s a criminal, are they going to call you and tell you they have access to my account?'”
Brito said he offered to send bank officials screen shots of the information he had on his computer.
“They weren’t the least bit interested,” he said. “They weren’t even interested in his name.”
Brito shared with the Sun Journal images showing the Connecticut man’s name, address and account information. The newspaper will not publish the images because they compromise the man’s personal information.
Brito said he was disappointed with the reaction from bank officials: He had expected a more emphatic response to the security breach, especially considering the extent of financial information he had accessed. He thought that by contacting the bank immediately, he might help them nip a delicate problem in the bud.
“We called them, honestly,” Brito said. “We thought we were helping.”
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