The United Steelworkers Union is a major union of skilled labor in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. Local Union 286 represents workers in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Any workers belonging to this local union chapter may have been harmed by a recent data breach.
The United Steelworkers Local 286 data breach occurred when one person accessed an employee email account. Once inside that employee's email, the hacker had access to private, financial, and medical data for many different members of the Union. This information could be used for identity theft purposes and even more.
It was later confirmed that an attacker was able to gain entry into employee email accounts of the union between June 16 and July 18, 2022. During that period of more than one month, the attacker had the ability to look through emails and files with confidential information within them.
Many members of the United Steelworkers Local 286 chapter could have been impacted by this data breach. If you are part of the local union, you should watch for a notice that informs you your data may have been involved. If you were exposed to this breach, you should closely monitor your credit reports and your financial accounts for any problems in the future.
We do not know how many United Steelworkers files were accessed and impacted during this data breach. It's likely that dozens of files or more were available in the employee email account accessed, which could have exposed thousands of individuals.