LifeLock Blog

Citizens is a property insurance company that covers Florida homeowners who are unable to get private property insurance. They have over 122,523 customers in Palm Beach, Martin, and St.Lucie counties alone. Citizens intercepted a very interesting data breach. Apparently someone changed their mailing address using the post office online tools to intercept all of their mail, which would include applications and payments from their current and prospective customers.

Citizens discovered the fraud when they received a confirmation of the change of address in the mail. The thieves tried to have that forwarded as well, but the second application for a change of address had not gone through yet so Citizens was able to receive the confirmation before any real damage had been done.

Citizens and the Post Office are confident that no mail had yet been forwarded to the fraudulent address. Citizens is not taking any chances however, they are sending out letters to 213,000 customers and applicants that might have sent a payment or an application during the time in question. The letter instructed customers to call a hotline to ensure their payment had been received, and so far Citizens has not discovered any breaches.

Citizens is most concerned about the insurance applications that might have been sent. The applications would include potential customers date of birth, Social Security number, and address. Everything an identity thief would need to steal someone’s identity.

This tactic is a new one on me! I have never heard of anyone trying and change the address of a business to obtain their customers information. Seems like it might have worked if their second change of address would have gone through before Citizens received the confirmation. Citizens would have figured it out in a couple days when they stopped receiving their mail. I give the identity thief an A for effort, but a F for execution.