In a departure from the recent spate of stolen data incidents, one payroll firm admits it gave away information on tens of thousands of investors. Someone impersonated corporate officers and tricked Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) into releasing the names, addresses and holdings of individual investors, Reuters reported Thursday.

Customers affected include 125,000 at Fidelity Investments, 10,000 at UBS, and 3,800 at Morgan Stanley. Reuters was unable to get any information regarding customers of Bear Stearns Cos. Inc., Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.. ADP declined to comment on exactly how many accounts in total were affected.

According to ADP, no account numbers or social security numbers were given to the impostor. The company said requests from an "unauthorized party" were honored between November 2005 and last February. The company notified federal law enforcement officials and its broker clients about the incident in February.

 

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