AUSTIN – Millions of Texans who bought hunting or fishing licenses may have had personal information exposed in a data breach tied to the state\u2019s license sales system, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife.<\/p>\n
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said Texas Cyber Command recently detected a cybersecurity incident involving the department\u2019s license system vendor, which handles the sale of hunting and fishing licenses.<\/p>\n
An investigation indicates \u201can unauthorized actor may have obtained driver license information, passport numbers (if provided), email addresses, phone numbers, and residential addresses for more than 3 million Texas hunting and fishing license customers,\u201d TPWD said.<\/p>\n
TPWD said Social Security numbers, dates of birth and financial information, including credit card details, were not obtained in the incident. The agency also said there is no evidence that customers under 18 were involved and no evidence that any specific group was targeted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe recognize the seriousness of this issue and have identified and implemented additional security options to better protect customer information,\u201d TPWD said. \u201cMany of our staff are hunters and anglers and were affected by this incident. We are committed to continuing to work with the license system vendor to implement increased safeguards to prevent future incidents.\u201d<\/p>\n
TPWD said it is working with the vendor to implement new safeguards and enhanced monitoring services. The agency said immediate steps were taken to strengthen access controls for customer profile data, and additional security features will be added in the future.<\/p>\n
License sales will continue on schedule for August and the next license year, TPWD said.<\/p>\n
Affected customers are eligible for one year of free credit monitoring through Kroll, according to TPWD. Customers can confirm eligibility by calling a dedicated call center at (844) 959-7123. The enrollment deadline for the free credit monitoring is Sept. 14, 2026.<\/p>\n
The call center is available from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. CT, Monday through Friday, to answer questions about the incident or the services being offered, TPWD said.<\/p>\n
As precautions, TPWD recommends customers monitor for fraud and identity theft by reviewing credit reports and financial statements for unauthorized activity, consider freezing credit with Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, and be cautious about potential scams that use personal information to impersonate companies or officials. TPWD advised avoiding clicking links or sharing personal details unless a request is confirmed as legitimate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN – Millions of Texans who bought hunting or fishing licenses may have had personal information exposed in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-346383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346383","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=346383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}