MARLTON, N.J. – Jan. 4, 2022 – PRLog — The law firm of Console & Associates, P.C. recently announced it is launching an investigation into the Primary Residential Mortgage, Inc. (“PRMI”) data breach to determine whether the company may be liable to those consumers impacted by the breach. If this investigation reveals that Primary Residential Mortgage failed to protect consumer data leading up to the breach, the company may be liable to all affected consumers through a data breach class action lawsuit.

Cyberattacks such as this recent PRMI data breach put consumers at risk of identity theft and other potential financial losses. While the fact that a data breach occurred does not automatically mean the company is liable to consumers, if the evidence emerges that PRMI mishandled the personal information of consumers, the company could be held financially responsible.  Although it is too soon to tell if Primary Residential Mortgage, Inc. was negligent, Console & Associates P.C., is looking into the data breach on behalf of all affected parties.

Founder of Console & Associates, P.C., attorney Richard Console, explains, “It’s easy to place all the blame for a data breach on the person who hacks into a company’s system; however, this ignores the legal and moral obligation businesses owe to their customers. When someone gives a company their business, they trust that the information in the company’s possession will remain private—and out of the hands of criminals. While protecting consumer data requires a business to undergo some effort and expense, in our current environment of widespread hacking, this is a cost of doing business that all companies must take seriously.”

On August 8, 2021, Primary Residential Mortgage learned that an unauthorized person may have gained access to the company’s servers and accessed sensitive consumer information. In response to this realization, PRMI retained a cybersecurity firm to further investigate the incident, which revealed that the names, Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses numbers and government identification numbers of as many as 59,559 individuals were compromised. On October 27, 2021, Primary Residential Mortgage sent out data breach notifications to all current and former clients affected by the breach.

While PRMI has no knowledge as to whether the unauthorized third party actually obtained or plans to use any of the compromised information, consumers should be vigilant about protecting themselves. Thus, anyone who received a data breach notification from Primary Residential Mortgage, Inc. should take the following steps:

1. Carefully read over the entire data breach letter;
2. Keep a physical copy of the letter;
3. Enroll in the complementary credit monitoring service offered by Primary Residential Mortgage;
4. Log in to all online accounts to change passwords and answers to security questions;
5. Check credit card and bank account statements regularly for any signs of unauthorized activity;
6. Monitor credit reports closely for any unexpected changes;
7. Request one of the three major credit bureaus add a fraud alert to the consumer’s profile; and
8. Notify all banks and credit card companies of the data breach.

To learn more about this data breach, please visit https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/consumer-data-breach-alert-primary-8471011/

Console & Associates, P.C. is committed to protecting consumer privacy. The firm investigates a wide range of cybercrimes, including data breaches, ransomware and malware attacks and other network intrusions in an effort to hold companies accountable for abusing the trust consumers place in them. Console & Associates, P.C. can be reached through the firm’s website at https://www.myinjuryattorney.com/consumer-privacy-data-breach-lawyers/.