Settlement penalizes eight insurance companies for poor cybersecurity, hacking campaign

STATEWIDE — EIGHT CAR INSURANCE COMPANIES WHOSE POOR CYBERSECURITY ALLOWED hackers to steal driver's license numbers to fraudulently obtain unemployment benefits will have to pay a total of $14.2 million in penalties that NY Attorney General Letitia James has secured for consumers. The Office of the Attorney General's investigation, in tandem with the NYS Department of Financial Services (DFS), found that the eight companies failed to protect the private information of more than 825,000 New Yorkers.

The data breaches were part of a hacking campaign that targeted car insurance companies' quoting tools and stole people's personal information, including driver's license numbers and birth dates. The hackers later used some of the stolen driver's license information to file fraudulent unemployment claims at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The companies were American Family Mutual Insurance Company/Midvale Indemnity Company, Farmers Insurance, Hagerty Insurance Agency, The Hartford Insurance Group, Infinity Insurance Company, Liberty Mutual Insurance, Metromile and State Auto Mutual Insurance Company.

The settlements require all eight companies to pay penalties and significantly improve their data security. Affected New Yorkers were offered free credit report monitoring for one year.

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