1News can confirm that nearly 15,000 New Zealand driver licences have been caught up in the Latitude Financial breach so far, with the NZTA bracing for many more to be affected.
In a statement, Waka Kotahi said it "can confirm that 14,925 New Zealand driver licence cards were impacted by the first breach identified by Latitude Financial Services".
Waka Kotahi says it's still working to assess the scope of the exposure.
"They will be communicating next steps directly to their impacted customers."
Today, in a stark revision to its initial estimates, Latitude Financial, the company said the number of Australian and New Zealand driver licence numbers stolen had blown out to approximately 7.9 million “of which approximately 3.2 million, or 40%, were provided to us in the last 10 years."
In addition, Latitude Financial has said 53,000 passport numbers were taken too.
New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs said last week that 1342 passports had been exposed in the breach already.
In addition, a further approximately 6.1 million records dating back to at least 2005 were taken, including names, addresses, telephone numbers and date of births.
Until last month, the company was operating in New Zealand with a buy now pay later business called Genoapay. It is still operating in New Zealand with its credit card service Gem Visa.
In a statement Latitude Financial chief executive Ahmed Fahour said the latest developments were “hugely disappointing”.
“We are committed to working closely with impacted customers and applicants to minimise the risk and disruption to them, including reimbursing the cost if they choose to replace their ID document.”
He said the company was committed to a full review of what’s occurred.
“We urge all our customers to be vigilant and on the look-out for suspicious behaviour relating to their accounts. We will never contact customers requesting their passwords.“
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