French Unemployment Agency Data Breach Impacts 43 Million People

France Travail issued a warning regarding a data breach that likely exposed information on more than 43 million people, including full names, addresses, emails, phone numbers and more.

France Travail is a governmental agency that deals with the unemployed, which means it also gathers a lot of personal information. This is likely why hackers targeted the agency in the first place.

According to official reports, hackers compromised the agency’s systems between Feb 6 and March 5 this year, and exfiltrated a lot of personal information. The only good news is that criminals had no access to credentials or financial information.

“Taking into account the technical investigations carried out, the personal data exposed are as follows: first and last name, social security number, date of birth, France Travail identifier, email and postal addresses and telephone numbers. Passwords and banking details are not affected by this act of cyber malware,” the agency revealed.

Authorities also warned of the future risks stemming from this data breach. They cautioned people to be wary of emails, SMS message, or even calls that might use this type of information. The agency has become the process of informing the data breach victims.

“The potential consequences of this case concern the different forms of phishing , attempted fraud or identity theft of which the people concerned by this incident could be victims,” the authorities explained. “Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr recommends being particularly vigilant in the face of any telephone call or message (email, SMS) which could use your compromised personal data in order to make a targeted scam or phishing attempt credible.”

Unfortunately, this is not the first massive security incident at France Travail. Just last year, another data breach affected 10 million people. Also, there are no details of what actually happened or how the criminals got into the agency’s systems.