Fidelity Investments, one of the world's largest asset managers, has confirmed that personal information of over 77,000 customers, including Social Security numbers and driver's licenses, was compromised in a data breach in August.

The Boston, Massachusetts-based investment firm said in a filing with the Maine attorney general on Wednesday that an unnamed third party accessed information from its systems between Aug. 17 and Aug. 19 “using two client accounts it had recently established.” “.

“We discovered this activity on August 19 and took immediate action to disable access,” Fidelity said in a letter to those affected, adding that the incident did not involve access to customers’ Fidelity accounts.

Fidelity confirmed that a total of 77,099 customers were affected by the breach, and its completed review of compromised data revealed that customers' personal information was affected. When asked by TechCrunch, Fidelity did not say how the creation of two Fidelity customer accounts allowed access to the data of thousands of other customers.

In another data breach notification filed with the New Hampshire Attorney General, Fidelity revealed that the third party “accessed and retrieved certain documents related to Fidelity customers and other individuals by submitting fraudulent requests to an internal database that contained images of documents in the connection with Fidelity customers.”

Fidelity said the data breach affected customers' Social Security numbers and driver's licenses, according to a separate data breach notice Fidelity filed with the Massachusetts attorney general.

At the time of writing, there was no information about the breach on Fidelity's website.

When reached, Fidelity spokesman Michael Aalto told TechCrunch that the incident did not involve access to accounts “or funds” of Fidelity customers. Fidelity declined to answer our specific questions about the incident.

According to Fidelity, the company counts more than 51 million retail investors among its customers, representing total customer assets of around $14.1 trillion (as of June 2024).

Updated with Fidelity's response and again with new information from Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The fourth paragraph has been corrected to indicate that the two Fidelity accounts were created and not breached; This was due to an error by the publisher. ZW.