Texas Parks and Wildlife vendor breach exposes 3 million license holders

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department says a breach at the third-party vendor that runs its hunting and fishing license sales exposed personal data for 3,087,721 customers, in what officials call the state's largest government data breach this year. The exposed information includes driver's license details, passport numbers where provided, email addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses; the department says Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and financial data were not taken. Texas Cyber Command detected the intrusion, which reached customer profile data through the vendor's systems. Because driver's license and passport numbers cannot be reset, affected people face lasting identity-theft and phishing risk.

Check

Texas hunting and fishing license holders should enroll in the offered Kroll credit monitoring before September 14, watch for phishing referencing licenses or state agencies, and review financial statements for fraud.

Affected

The 3,087,721 Texas hunting and fishing license customers whose driver's license, passport, and contact details were exposed through the department's third-party license vendor; minors were reportedly not affected.

Fix

Place a credit freeze or fraud alert with the major credit bureaus, enroll in the free monitoring, and stay alert to identity fraud. Organizations should tighten third-party vendor access controls and monitoring.