The personal unemployment claims data of at least 1.4 million Washingtonians may have been stolen in a hack of software used by the state auditor’s office, raising fears of identity theft and fraud amid an already bleak pandemic downturn.
State Auditor Pat McCarthy said Monday the records — including Social Security numbers and banking information — were exposed during a December breach of Accellion, a software provider the auditor’s office uses to transfer large computer files.
In a head-slapping irony, the compromised data had been collected as part of the auditor’s investigations into how the state Employment Security Department (ESD) lost $600 million to fraudulent unemployment claims.
The state auditor has set up a web page for people who think their personal information could have been exposed in the data breach. See https://sao.wa.gov/breach2021/.