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Just when you think it’s safe to provide your Social Security number on your doctor’s intake forms, another wave of medical data breaches crashes over our hopeful heads and reminds us that less (personal detail) is more.
Read on to learn which medical centers are affected now — and about two new “medical data breach” lawsuits against a Canadian hospital and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Read More
The ITRC has recently put together a survey on www.idtheftcenter.org attempting to find out what consumers know about medical identity theft. Click to find out more about the growing threat of medical identity fraud and how you can respond to this time-sensitive survey! Read More
Wireless technology has made it possible to create implantable medical devices that do everything from monitoring the heart rhythms of patients to delivering the correct amount of insulin to diabetics. But according to a new report by the General Accounting Office, that lifesaving technology has also left the door wide open to hackers.
Find out why wireless medical devices could be dangerous to your health and to your pocketbook. Read More
We’ve reported extensively on medical data breaches, but a new ABC News investigation has revealed startling information that our “private” medical records are, data breach or no data breach, just not private.
How can this be? Read More
The Department of Health and Human Services announced a settlement with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee after the company’s inadequate security measures allowed 57 unencrypted hard drives containing private health information to be stolen from a medical facility.
The unencrypted hard drives contained the protected health information of over one million individuals, including member names, Social Security numbers, diagnosis codes, dates of birth, and health plan identification numbers. Read More
Attention, Medicaid recipients in Utah and South Carolina!
If you or a loved one uses Medicaid or either state’s program for children, be sure to urge them to monitor their credit reports, bank accounts, and other areas.
Why? Because those are the key areas hackers could target with the information obtained after a recent theft of personal information of approximately 182,000 beneficiaries of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program in Utah, and another 228,435 Medicaid beneficiaries in South Carolina. Read More
A physician network computer has been stolen in California — while the health network says it was in the process of encrypting their computers. This theft compromised the personal information on more than 4 million patients dating back to 1995. Read More
More than 3.5% of the U.S. population has had their personal health information (PHI) compromised. In the first half of 2011 alone, more than five million medical records have become lost or mishandled — that’s 5,000,000 in six months! Due to such egregious medical data breaches, some “patients will put off seeking treatment, as they are concerned about the unintended consequences suffered when their PHI may become compromised, ” according to this HuffPost Tech article. Read More
When you consider the widespread impact of data breaches at Epsilon and Sony PlayStation, it’s not surprising that customers are more cautious about conducting business with certain financial institutions and retailers. According to a new survey, “80% of Americans, 81% of Britons, and 83% of Australians who have personal medical information are concerned about moving that data to an electronic form because of the risks of identity theft or invasion of privacy resulting from this information being exposed on the Internet.” Read More
Article first published as Do You Know Where Your Sensitive Medical Information Is Right Now? on Technorati.
We all know that doctors and hospitals screw up sometimes. We’ve heard of surgeons amputating the wrong limb, or patients being given the wrong medication, or some other egregious mistake. But do hospitals make other mistakes that might be putting you and your family in harm’s way – even when you’re not physically at the hospital? Turns out, yes, that problem is happening quite frequently due to the frailty of online medical records. Click the headline above to read more. Read More
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