PPP Loan Information published – Under a court order, the Small Business Administration (SBA) has published a list of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program loan recipients on their website. The list includes the loan recipient’s name, address, the original loan amount, and the lending institution for all PPP loans of $150,000 or less.
The lawsuit was filed by multiple national news organizations citing the Freedom of Information Act and seeking transparency from government agencies about the recipients of these funds.

A similar list was released in July for PPP loans over $150,000. Here’s what we learned from that experience, and how you can prepare for this one.

What to expect

Hopefully, nothing. The overwhelming majority of PPP recipients received loans under $150,000, so your information is unlikely to stick out. We hope that you’re not impacted at all by the release of this information.

However, after the list of PPP loan recipients was released in the summer, some people used the information to their advantage. Some sold products or marketed their own business to those listed. Others were more malicious, sending letters or emails to PPP recipients posing as their lender in an attempt to get sensitive information. Some PPP recipients even received unwanted news coverage about their loans and loan amounts.

What you can do

Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to prevent your information from being released. But, you can be prepared in the unlikely event you are contacted as a result of this information being made public.

  • Prepare for phishing or other scams – Your bank won’t contact you asking you to verify personal information like account numbers. Communication about your PPP loan will continue to come from channels we’ve already been using. Learn more about identifying fraud and how you can report suspicious activity to us.
  • Prepare a comment, or no comment – Think about what you would say in the unlikely event you’re contacted by local, regional, or national media. However you’d like to handle it, the best way to do so is by being prepared ahead of time.

We hope that this information is helpful should you need it—but we’re more hopeful that you don’t need it at all.