The Blubber

Fidelity Investments, one of the world’s largest asset management firms, has confirmed that the personal information of more than 77,000 customers, including Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses, was compromised in a data breach in August.

The Boston-based company disclosed in a filing with Maine’s attorney general on Wednesday that an unidentified third party gained access to its systems between August 17 and August 19 by using two customer accounts that had been recently created.

“We detected the unauthorized activity on August 19 and immediately terminated the access,” Fidelity stated in a letter to the affected customers. The firm emphasized that the breach did not involve access to Fidelity customer accounts.

A total of 77,099 customers were impacted by the breach, and Fidelity's review confirmed that personal information had been compromised. When contacted by TechCrunch, Fidelity did not explain how two customer accounts provided access to the data of tens of thousands of other customers.

In a separate notice filed with New Hampshire’s attorney general, Fidelity revealed that the third party had “accessed and retrieved certain documents related to Fidelity customers and other individuals by submitting fraudulent requests to an internal database that stored images of documents related to Fidelity customers.”

The data breach exposed Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses, according to another notification filed with Massachusetts' attorney general.

As of this writing, no information about the breach was available on Fidelity’s website.