US data broker declares bankruptcy after data leak

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2024-11-01 19:00:18

Months after a trove of personal data it had collected was stolen, US data broker National Public Data has filed for bankruptcy. In its filing the company admits that the number of people impacted by the data theft is much higher than previously reported.

Earlier this year personal data belonging to “hundreds of millions” of people was stolen from US data broker National Public Data. The company admitted to the scope of the theft in a bankruptcy filing. Several outlets are reporting on the story.

National Public Data is a company based in Florida that conducts background checks. Its clients include employers seeking to investigate potential new hires.

In August the company confirmed that it had been the victim of a data breach. An announcement on National Public Data’s website stated that “a third-party bad actor” attacked the company’s database in December 2023. In “April and summer 2024,” data was stolen from the database.

National Public Data had at first indicated that the stolen data included names, addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers and social security numbers. It remained unclear however how many people had been affected by the theft. In its announcement, the company gave no information as to the scale of the breach – while in a data breach notification submitted to the Maine attorney general’s office, the company claimed that 1.3 million people were affected.