It seems weekly now. Massive database breaches are a regular in the news. Hopefully, people aren’t becoming to desensitized. This week, United Health Care announced that a “substantial proportion of people in America” had their personal information accessed during ransomware attack on their systems in February. Considering United Health Care handles one in every three medical records and processes about half of all medical claims in the U.S., a “substantial proportion” is a lot of Americans.
Federal civil rights investigators are already looking into whether protected health information was exposed in the attack. UnitedHealth did say that some screen shots containing protected health information or personally identifiable information were posted for about a week online on the dark web, which standard browsers can’t access. BUT FRAUDSTERS CAN!
With so many large-scale data breaches, is your personal information already in the dark web? Probably. If not, it’s just a matter of time! It’s going to take several months of analysis before UnitedHealth can identify and notify people who were affected. UnitedHealth said Monday that it was still restoring services disrupted by the attack. It has been focused first on restoring those that affect patient access to care or medication. So potentially substantial proportioned victims are going to have to wait.
While medical records are the documents that explains all the details about the patient’s history and results, it is all the non clinical data about a patient, including: name, date of birth, address, phone number, email address, sex, race and probably at least four digits if not all the digits of the Social Security #. Which can be used in any and all types of fraud.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article ‘Substantial proportion’ of US had data stolen in Change Healthcare ransomware attack” published by The Record on April 23, 2024.
A “substantial proportion of people in America” had their personal information accessed during the ransomware attack on Change Healthcare in February, the company’s parent company said Monday. The company has faced questions from healthcare providers and lawmakers about what personal data was in the hands of hackers who claimed to have terabytes of the company’s data.
During a congressional hearing last week, a doctor testified that they have repeatedly asked UnitedHealth Group, which owns Change Healthcare, for clarity about what they should tell patients considering the company handles about one in every three medical records and processes about half of all medical claims in the U.S.
