77,099 Americans Exposed As Financial Giant Leaks Private Customer Information, Discloses Data Breach

A US financial giant says thousands of customers have had their personal information exposed in a mysterious data breach.

A new filing with the Office of the Maine Attorney General shows the trillion-dollar asset manager Fidelity is sending notices to 77,099 people, alerting them to a breach that happened back in August.

Fidelity says someone was able to access customer information by creating new accounts – although exactly what happened and what data was stolen is unclear.

“Between August 17 and August 19, a third party accessed and obtained certain information without authorization using two customer accounts that they had recently established. We detected this activity on August 19 and immediately took steps to terminate the access.

An investigation was promptly launched with assistance from external security experts. The information obtained by the third party related to a small subset of our customers.”

Fidelity’s head of external corporate communications, Michael Aalto, tells BleepingComputer that the incident has not allowed anyone to obtain unauthorized access to their accounts and no funds have been compromised.

“They did not view accounts. They viewed customer information.”

Fidelity is offering two years of identity protection services to affected customers and recommends they closely monitor their finances for signs of fraudulent activity.

Generated Image: Midjourney