Personal information of over 10,000 FDNY EMS patients may have been exposed

The New York City Fire Department has notified over 10,000 patients previously treated or transported by FDNY EMS between 2011 and 2018 that their personal information may have been compromised after an employee’s personal external hard drive went missing.

“The department is taking the appropriate and prompt response at this time,” said Joe Borelli, chair of the Committee on Fire and Emergency Management. “This is an issue of personal mistake and personal error, this is not a situation where some foreign entity or person hacked into the system to access the data.”

The FDNY says that the employee who uploaded the information onto the personal external drive was authorized to access the records. 

The personal hard drive was reported lost in March, but it was not until this week that the 10,253 patients were notified. Of those patients, 3,000 may have also had their social security numbers compromised.

While the department says there’s no evidence that any of the information stored on the drive has been accessed, however the department is treating the incident as if it was.