City of Boston Data Breach Notice (Massachusetts Attorney General)

The City of Boston has notified 206 Massachusetts residents that their driver's license numbers were exposed in a data breach. The filing, submitted to the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs on August 17, 2026, lists driver's license numbers as the exposed information.

Driver's license numbers do not expire

Unlike credit cards or passwords, a driver's license number is a permanent identifier. Once it is out of the organization's control, it remains valuable to identity thieves and fraudsters for years. This is the core fact that shapes what this incident means for anyone whose number was included.

The record does not state when the incident occurred, only the filing date. It also does not disclose the root cause, whether the data was encrypted at rest, or how it was accessed. Those details remain unknown. What is known is that 206 people had their driver's license numbers exposed, and no other categories — including passwords, Social Security numbers, or financial account information — appear in the filing.

What this exposure actually enables

A driver's license number is frequently used as a key piece of verification when opening new accounts, applying for government benefits, or filing taxes. Criminals can combine it with publicly available information such as name and date of birth to create synthetic identities or to impersonate someone during customer service calls and online applications.