{"id":344362,"date":"2026-06-20T23:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T23:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/344362\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T23:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T23:50:08","slug":"breach-exposes-data-of-3-million-texas-hunting-and-fishing-license-holders-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/344362\/","title":{"rendered":"Breach exposes data of 3 million Texas hunting and fishing license holders, officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>More than 3 million <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/texas\/tag\/texas\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Texans<\/a> are being offered free credit monitoring after a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/texas\/tag\/data-breach\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">cybersecurity incident exposed driver&#8217;s license and contact information<\/a> from the state&#8217;s hunting and fishing license system, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department officials said.<\/p>\n<p>Texas Cyber Command detected the breach at the agency&#8217;s third\u2011party licensing vendor. Officials said no Social Security numbers, dates of birth, or financial information were accessed, and records belonging to minors were not affected.<\/p>\n<p>Details of compromised information<\/p>\n<p>The data exposed included driver&#8217;s license information, passport numbers, email addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses for about 3 million customers, according to the department.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Many of our staff are hunters and anglers and were affected by this incident,&#8221; TPWD said in a news release. &#8220;&#8230; Immediate steps were taken to strengthen access controls for customer profile data, and additional security features will be added in the future.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are committed to continuing to work with the license system vendor to implement increased safeguards to prevent future incidents.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In response, the department said it is working with the license system vendor and has strengthened access controls and monitoring.<\/p>\n<p>License sales were unaffected, and sales will proceed as scheduled for August and the next license year, TPWD said.<\/p>\n<p>Credit monitoring and consumer guidance<\/p>\n<p>One year of free Kroll credit monitoring is being offered to those impacted, with an enrollment deadline of Sept. 14, 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Those affected are advised to monitor their accounts, freeze their credit, place fraud alerts and stay vigilant for scams or impersonation attempts.<\/p>\n<p>Support available for those impacted<\/p>\n<p>The department said support is available from 8 a.m.\u20135:30 p.m. Monday through Friday at (844) 959\u20117123.<\/p>\n<p>\n          More from CBS News\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 3 million Texans are being offered free credit monitoring after a cybersecurity incident exposed driver&#8217;s license&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[37100,430,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-344362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-data-breach","tag-north-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}