Equifax said Thursday that an additional 2.4 million Americans were impacted by last year’s data breach, however these newly disclosed consumers had significantly less personal information stolen.
The company said hackers stole partial driver’s license information from this latest group of victims. The news brings the total number of Americans affected by the breach, which occurred between May and July, to about 148 million.Attackers were unable to get the state where the license was issued, the date of issuance or its expiration date.
In total, roughly 147.9 million Americans have been impacted by Equifax’s data breach. It remains the largest data breach of personal information in history.
“This is not about newly discovered stolen data,” said Equifax CEO Paulino do Rego Barros Jr. “It’s about sifting through the previously identified stolen data, analyzing other information in our databases that was not taken by the attackers, making connections that enabled us to identify additional individuals.”
The company says they were able to find the additional 2.4 million Americans by cross referencing names with partial driver’s license numbers using both internal and external data sources.
Individuals with stolen Social Security numbers are generally more at risk for identity theft because of how prolific Social Security numbers are used in identity verification.
In September, Equifax initially reported that 143 million consumers were affected by the cybersecurity attack. It said Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some cases, driver’s license numbers were stolen. In October, it revised up its estimate of the number of people affected by 2.5 million, saying the additional accounts were discovered through a cybersecurity firm’s forensic review.
Equifax says it will reach out to all newly impacted consumers and will provide the same credit monitoring and identity theft protection services they have been offering to the original victims.