Borrowers are slamming yet another mortgage lender with class action lawsuits after it revealed a data breach last month. Troy, Michigan-based Towne Mortgage did not say in a public notice how many of its customers were impacted in a June incident, in which a hacker may have copied data from its network. The attack compromised Social Security numbers and financial accounts and hit at least 474 Massachusetts residents, according to a Nov. 13 disclosure. Cybersecurity blogs report the ransomware-as-a-service group Blackbyte took credit for the attack on the dark web, although Towne like most corporate victims did not provide further details. The sizable lender, which publicly reported $1.8 billion in origination volume last year, did not return requests for comment Tuesday. In response to the incident, the company offered victims 24 months of complimentary credit monitoring services. Affected consumers immediately sued the company following its announcement, and the lender today faces seven class action claims in a Michigan federal court. Borrowers accuse the lender of negligence The complaints resemble the litigation typically filed against mortgage firms following such incidents. Minnesota borrower Thomas Stucky, in a Nov. 19 lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, accuses the independent mortgage bank of negligence and breach of fiduciary duty in failing to protect his personal identifiable information. "This unencrypted, unredacted p

Borrowers are slamming yet another mortgage lender with class action lawsuits after it revealed a data breach last month. Troy, Michigan-based Towne Mortgage did not say in a public notice how many of its customers were impacted in a June incident, in which a hacker may have copied data from its network. The attack compromised Social Security numbers and financial accounts and hit at least 474 Massachusetts residents, according to a Nov. 13 disclosure. Cybersecurity blogs report the ransomware-as-a-service group Blackbyte took credit for the attack on the dark web, although Towne like most corporate victims did not provide further details. The sizable lender, which publicly reported $1.8 billion in origination volume last year, did not return requests for comment Tuesday. In response to the incident, the company offered victims 24 months of complimentary credit monitoring services. Affected consumers immediately sued the company following its announcement, and the lender today faces seven class action claims in a Michigan federal court. Borrowers accuse the lender of negligence The complaints resemble the litigation typically filed against mortgage firms following such incidents. Minnesota borrower Thomas Stucky, in a Nov. 19 lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, accuses the independent mortgage bank of negligence and breach of fiduciary duty in failing to protect his personal identifiable information. "This unencrypted, unredacted p