Bank of America Warns Social Security Numbers, IDs and Other Sensitive Customer Data Potentially Exposed in Third-Party Document Destruction Blunder

Bank of America is warning a small group of customers about a new data breach that could potentially expose confidential and sensitive information.

In a filing with the Massachusetts state government, the bank says a provider of document destruction services inappropriately handled confidential documents belonging to customers on December 30th.

The bank has not declared how many accounts are affected nationwide, noting only that at least two customers in the state are affected.

“A document destruction vendor did not secure bank-related materials appropriately in transport. Some documents were found outside of the secure containers on the exterior of the financial center.

The vendor cannot confirm if your documents were directly involved or affected. They may have been, and as a result, we are reaching out to notify you in an abundance of caution and support.”

Bank of America says the impacted information may have included first and last names, financial account details, addresses, property addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, gender, dates of birth, social security numbers and other unique government ID data.

This breach follows a separate incident revealed in January, when BofA warned another third-party breach placed the data of at least 414 customers at risk.

Following this latest incident, Bank of America says it is offering the potentially impacted customers complimentary membership to an identity-theft protection service for two years.

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