Beloved New York Store May Owe Nearly 1 Million New Yorkers Money

One of "New York's favorite stores" exposed the personal information of over 3 million customers.

On Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced she secured $400,000 from Wegmans following a nationwide data breach.

Wegmans Exposed New York Customer's Personal Information

“Wegmans failed to safely store and seal its consumers’ personal information, instead it left sensitive information out in the open for years,” James stated. “Today, Wegmans is paying the price for recklessly handling and exposing millions of consumers’ personal information on the internet. In the 21st century, there’s no excuse for companies to have poor cybersecurity systems and practices that hurt consumers.”

The very popular grocery store chain exposed the personal information of more than three million consumers nationwide, including more than 830,000 New Yorkers, according to James.

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In April 2021, a security researcher told Wegmans that a cloud storage container hosted on Microsoft Azure was left unsecured and open to the public. The database had the records of over three million customers including names, email addresses, passwords, mailing addresses, and additional data derived from drivers’ license numbers.

The cloud storage container was left open from January 2018 until April 2021.

"Wegmans takes security of customer information very seriously and immediately remedied the situation once it was discovered," Wegmans said in its statement, according to NBC. "We have improved our processes to better protect customer information in the future. While we do not agree with some of the conclusions drawn by the attorney general, we cooperated fully in the investigation and are glad it has been concluded."

Wegmans Agrees to Pay New York $400,000

Wegmans agreed to pay New York $400,000 in penalties. It's unclear at this time how the money will be divided. In addition, Wegmans must adopt new measures to protect consumers’ personal information.

Wegmans Food Markets opened up its first location in 1916. Wegmans now operates 106 stores in seven states, including in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. It employs more than 50,000 employees chainwide.

Wegmans Named Best Company To Work For

In 2020, Wegmans was named the third-best company to work for when Fortune released its annual "100 Best Companies to Work For" list. Wegmans placed third.

Wegmans made the list in 2021 and again in 2022. 2022 marked Wegmans 25th straight year on the list and this year Wegmans was named the best large retail workplace.

Wegmans Very Popular in Southern Tier, Finger Lakes and Western New York

You can find Wegmans in the Southern Tier, Finger Lakes and Western parts of New York State. WGRZ, out of Buffalo, calls Wegmans "one of Western New York's favorite stores."

Wegmans Opened First Hudson Valley Location in Westchester

In June of 2020, Wegmans opened up its first Hudson Valley location. Wegmans opened on Sunday, June 7 in Harrison. The Wegmans is located at 106 Corporate Park Drive in Harrison, near I-287 and the Hutchinson River Parkway.

You can see more photos of the Hudson Valley Wegmans below.