FDNY Member Loses Hard Drive Containing Data on 10K Patients

New York Daily News

An FDNY employee lost the personal information of more than 10,000 people treated by the city’s emergency medical service.

The data, collected between 2011 and 2018, was on a department worker’s personal hard drive that was lost in March, the FDNY said.

Out of an abundance of caution, FDNY officials sent letters to all 10,253 people notifying them of the breach. Of those people, 2,988 are being offered credit monitoring because their social security numbers were on the hard drive.

“Although there is no evidence to date that any of the information stored on the personal device has been accessed, the FDNY is treating the incident as if the information may have been seen by an unauthorized person,” the agency said in a statement.

The FDNY did not name the employee, share any details about where they work or why it took five months to notify people that their personal information was compromised.