Detroit Land Bank Authority investigating after strangers' credit card info exposed

DETROIT (WJBK) - A woman claims she has evidence of a security breach involving Detroit Land Bank Authority's website. She says she discovered the problem while checking her personal account online when she realized she could see the very private and personal information of other Land Bank customers -- their credit card numbers. 

"Do you know how much of a liability that is?"

Tamira works from home, has two online businesses and recently started investing in Detroit properties again. She went to make a payment for a house she won during an online Detroit Land Bank Authority auction, but had trouble. 

She began to dig a little deeper --  and realized she could see the full accounts of other customers as well. Some information she could see was for one man who lived as far away as Tennessee. 

She's not alone. Others have complained about the same data breach on the Land Bank's Facebook page. 

Tamira says she contacted the Land Bank directly, and even sent them screen shots of the exposed information.

"'When I go here to click, I can actually see you guys' clients; I can see a couple of their whole account numbers,'" she says she told the Land Bank representative. "He said, 'You need to go onto auto delete and just auto delete everything.' I can do that on my end, I said, but, you will have to contact every last client you have and tell them to go in their system and auto delete other peoples' credit card information."

She claims, though, that nothing has changed after multiple calls over the last week and half. She feels they've been "nonchalant" about the situation, and says they told her they need to send it to their legal department. 

"I don't need my information out there for it to get in the wrong hands," she says. 

Tamira claims you can only see the personal information of others if you have an online account registered with the Land Bank. Until the Land Bank fixes the problem, Tamira is forced to monitor her accounts. She also wanted to warn other investors who may be at risk.

"I do what I can to build the neighborhoods back up, and then you have a process that's dragging along. You got people who don't care, don't take this kind of stuff serious. It's like, if you guys weren't ready to get this program up and running, why even open it up to the public?"

Land Bank Executive Director Saskia Thompson told us, "Over the past several days we have been contacted by three users of the Detroit Land Bank website who indicated that credit card information belonging to other individuals appeared on their account screen. After initial review, we have not been able to determine whether this stems from the Land Bank website itself or another external cause. In an abundance of caution, we are temporarily disabling all financial transactions on BuildingDetroit.org while we conduct a full investigation into this matter."