NEW YORK, April 19 (UPI) -- The U.S. online broker Ameritrade said Tuesday account information of up to 200,000 customers may have been lost.
Donna Kush, a spokeswoman for Ameritrade, said the brokerage company was told in February that a package holding four data back-up cassettes containing current and former Ameritrade (Research) account holders' information from 2000 to 2003 was misplaced by a shipping company, reported CNN.
Three of the four tapes have been recovered by the shipper, but one tape containing data on 200,000 current and former customers, is still missing, according to Kush.
Ameritrade has reviewed the customer information from the missing back-up tape and has determined only 175,000 customers needed to be notified, in accordance with industry standards.
"We feel like we acted in a timely fashion," Kush said. "This was not an Ameritrade Systems issue or a compromise of our technology. This was related to a third party vendor."
Ameritrade has every reason to believe the missing tape has been destroyed or is still somewhere in the shipper's facility, Kush said.
