Up to 180,000 Vermont accounts on a state vendor’s job search website may have been compromised in a data breach, Gov. Phil Scott announced Thursday, making the breach much larger than previously believed.
The security breach could affect any person who had an account on the Vermont Department of Labor’s Job Link website since it was created in 2003 — including people who were legally required to sign up for Job Link as a condition of receiving unemployment benefits.
Personal information in the database includes names, dates of birth, addresses and social security numbers, though users could decline to submit a social security number to the system. Vermont is one of 10 states affected by the data breach, which involved a software vendor named America’s Joblink Alliance (AJLA). The other states are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maine and Oklahoma.
“This is appalling,” Scott said, “and I know this will be incredibly burdensome to the tens and thousands of Vermonters who are impacted.”