Construction-industry job site agrees to pay $230,000 fine for way some 3,000 Massachusetts resident may have had their personal information stolen

TradeSource, a Warwick, RI company that matches construction companies with skilled workers, agreed today to pay $230,000 to Massachusetts to settle allegations that a security breach of its internal network that may have exposed the personal information, including Social Security numbers, of people who had registered with it.

In a settlement agreement filed today in Suffolk Superior Court, the company also agreed to take various steps to prevent this from happening again - and to keep the state up to date on those steps.

The company did not admit to any wrong doing, but agreed that sometime in 2020, an employee responded to a well crafted "phishing" message that enabled some outsider to get into the company network, encrypt and possibly steal all its data and then demand a ransom to keep the information from being publicly released.

The state says at least 3,036 Massachusetts residents were affected.