Your most personal information is now in jeopardy of being stolen
It’s a gold mine for crooks.
No, not a stolen credit card or bank number… or even having a password hacked.
I’m talking about having everything there is to know about you stolen.
Things like your Social Security number, age, name, address and a lot, lot more — such as any medical conditions you have, drugs you take and the doctors you see. That, plus the numbers for your insurance policies.
Thanks to new laws regarding how medical files are kept, all that has been gathered up and entered as electronic data. It’s your most personal information ready and waiting for hackers to come and get it — almost as if someone were ringing a dinner bell for thieves.
That’s why you need to take some easy steps right now to protect yourself in this day and age of big-time data theft.
In July there was another big hack of medical data — something that occurs so often that it’s becoming a commonplace happening.
This time it was at Banner Health, a non-profit that manages a chain of hospitals. And Banner had to notify close to four million people that their most personal information had been compromised.
So what can crooks do with these medical records? For starters — just about anything and everything! It’s an information jackpot.
For example, a hacker who calls himself “thedarkoverlord” is currently attempting to sell 655,000 medical records lifted from orthopedic surgeons around the country for a buck each. And to sell it, he’s using another tech-trick called Bitcoins.
That’s a kind of digital currency that can be anonymously purchased for real money and then used to buy things. And some of the biggest companies out there, like overstock.com, Microsoft, Dell and Expedia are using Bitcoin “processing partners” so they can accept it as a form of payment.
And even though medical data hacking has been going on for some time now, it looks like it’s getting worse every year.
A new study by the Brookings Institution found that in the last seven years the very personal data of over 155 million Americans has been breached. And if you’re wondering why doctors and hospitals are switching everything from paper to electronic, well, that’s another fallout from Obamacare.
As part of the Affordable Care Act, medical providers must now, by law, make your health records electronic. And as the Brookings study discovered, a lot of them weren’t ready security-wise to make this kind of switch. But if they don’t comply they can be hit with big fines.
As I said, your medical information is like gold to crooks. It contains just about everything there is to know about you.
And unlike a credit card account where you can just close it down, you can’t change your name or age. And getting a new Social Security number is practically impossible.
So we all need to take some simple measures to protect ourselves as much as we can. And you can start by following these three steps:
- Always check your “explanation of benefits” statement from Medicare or your insurance company to make sure there are no payments for fraudulent charges on it.
- Make sure to check your credit reports, optimally at least twice a year. Look for medical listings or accounts that don’t belong to you.
- Make it a habit to keep a copy of your own medical records. Some providers are being asked to pay ransom money (or Bitcoins!) to get stolen patient records back.
And remember — each healthcare provider you visit is required to give you a list of anyone who has received a copy of your medical records. It’s called an “accounting of disclosures,” and you are permitted to get one copy every year.
Sources:
“Another health system hacked: How safe in your medical info?” Nick Tate, August 10, 2016, NewsMax, newsmax.com
