The Small Business Association (SBA) said that a bug on its website left the personal information of nearly 8,000 emergency aid applicants exposed until the agency realized its mistake, according to the Business Insider. The bug specifically affected people who applied for economic injury disaster loans in March. Once the SBA noticed the problem, it shut down the affected portion of the website, fixed the bug, then relaunched.

News of the now-plugged leak comes at a time when the public has been particularly eager to find out just who is receiving emergency aid from the government and for how much, particularly where it concerns the separate (and much larger) Paycheck Protection Program which was passed as part of the CARES Act, especially in light of the program running out of its initial funding in less than a fortnight. While the SBA has declined to release comprehensive data so far, what little people do know has, so far, not exactly made them happy.

Public resentment has been growing over revelations that while the local mom-and-pop establishments the program is ostensibly for waited in limbo for their emergency loans, major corporations with billions of dollars, like Shake Shack, had apparently no trouble at all getting funding. For example, according to Bloomberg, of the 300,000 small businesses that applied for loans through JPMorgan Chase, only 18,000 actually got money; in contrast, nearly all the 5,500 larger business customers, which includes Shake Shack, received loans of their own. One reason for this outcome was that most banks prioritized already-existing customers, especially their more lucrative ones, and another reason was that big companies have lots of lawyers and accountants, and they were thus able to draft loan applications much faster than the smaller ones.

Overall, while the government reported that 74 percent of loans issued were for under $150,000, Bloomberg said the data also showed that 2 percent of the firms approved for loans accounted for almost 30 percent of the funding. Meanwhile, 9 percent of companies got loans of at least $5 million. Further evidencing that it was mainly larger companies that benefited from the small business program, SBA data indicated that loans for more than $1 million made up 4 percent of the applications but nearly 45 percent of total approved dollars. Meanwhile, self-reported data from small business owners shows that most got nothing at all.

Responding to public anger over this state of affairs, the White House said it would ask some of the larger aid recipients to return the money similar to what Shake Shack did when news about its emergency loans reached the public. It is currently unknown what the other big companies that received funds think of this idea, and whether they can be persuaded to return the money based on being asked nicely.

A law professor writing in the New York Times suggested that one way to prevent what happened during the last round of PPP funding from happening during the next one is to specifically reserve a portion for businesses of 25 employees or fewer.

The NYSSCPA will present a Not-For-Profit Town Hall Teleconference on Friday, April 24, 1-2 p.m., which will address the CARES Act and other relief bills. The event is free for Society members.