SBA Leak Exposes Personal Data Of Nearly 8,000 Businesses
‘Personally identifiable information of a limited number of Economic Injury Disaster Loan applicants was potentially exposed to other applicants on SBA’s loan application site,’ the SBA said in a statement.
A flaw in the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) website exposed the personal information of nearly 8,000 businesses that applied for Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL).
Some 7,913 businesses were notified that their information might have been exposed to other applicants within the SBA portal, according to Business Insider. Small business owners in all 50 states are eligible for $10,000 advances on EIDL loans as a result of the coronavirus relief package passed by the U.S. Congress in March.
“Personally identifiable information of a limited number of Economic Injury Disaster Loan applicants was potentially exposed to other applicants on SBA’s loan application site,” the SBA told Business Insider in a statement. “We immediately disabled the impacted portion of the website, addressed the issue, and relaunched the application portal.”
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The SBA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from CRN. The data leak does not affect small businesses participating in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which is expected to receive an additional $310 billion of funding after running through the initially allotted $349 billion in just two weeks.
The SBA said there haven’t been any signs thus far of attempts to misuse any of this information, according to CNBC. The SBA told Business Insider that it’s offering potential impacted individuals one year of free credit monitoring.
Small business owners told CBS News in early April that when they went onto the SBA site to fill out an EIBL application, they found someone else's date of birth, Social Security number, email, phone numbers and business address all filled in where they were supposed to put their own personal information. The SBA acknowledged the leak several hours after the CBS story aired, but didn’t provide any details.