AT&T boasts great coverage; see something they won’t be boasting about

Credit card numbers, Driver’s License Numbers, Social Security Numbers – hundreds of names, all dumped in a random bin from Farrell Communications, no longer in business. These people don’t even know their information has been dumped. AT & Ts response – NOTHING – until the television station and local police got involved. They changed their tune pretty quickly.  http://www.news4jax.com/video/23675143/ Thank goodness an honest person found the files.

With the advent of the enforcement of the FACTA Red Flags Rule, LIABILITY FOLLOWS THE DATA. That means, AT&T is ultimately responsible, should these customers be negatively affected. For some reason, so many companies don’t think something like this will happen to them. And because of their lack of understanding their responsibilities, or because they just don’t want to take the time to implement the necessary and required measures, (or any number of other excuses I’ve heard), they are putting yours and my personal and private information at serious risk.  The next time you go to your doctor, kids’ pediatrician, sign up for cell phone service, sign up for cable service, test drive or buy a vehicle, enroll yourself or your child at a school, ask to see their Red Flags Rule Policy. This document should describe who sees your information, what information is collected, where it is stored, how long it is kept, how it is destroyed, and why they ask for your private information. If they cannot show it to you, then they don’t have a policy in place and you should be careful with the information you give them. The next thing you should do is contact me so I can educate them on their responsibilities.

After watching this report http://www.news4jax.com/video/23675143/ I had to chuckle to myself toward the end when the news anchor asked the reporter what these unknowing potential victims could do to protect themselves. The clueless reporter responded in the usual clueless manner – he advised people to contact the credit bureaus to see if anyone had “an identity theft”. While well-intentioned, he’s missing the bigger picture. The information on those records included copies of customers’ drivers licenses – when someone steals your driver’s license information and commits a crime, gets into an accident or maybe gets arrested for a DUI, I’m sorry to tell you that it’s not going to show up on your credit report. Neither will someone using your Social Security # to work in your name and then YOU get a letter from the IRS for taxes owed on a job YOU didn’t have.

What are you doing to protect your identity? “Shred baby shred” is not enough. You need someone watching your back and monitoring alone is not enough -that only tells you something has already happened, but doesn’t help you fix the problem. I can help….let me know you want the help.

http://www.news4jax.com/video/23675143/

Ya Get Whatya Pay For……

Another thorn in their side….

Not only were they fined for deceptive advertising, the fine also was because the supposed “secure data protection” they claimed to use to protect customers’ data, was in fact, not secure at all….

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9177353/Lifelock_worries_after_employee_data_leaked_to_Web?source=rss_news

Have you been hospitalized recently?

Healthcare Technology News recently reported findings from several surveys related to data breaches and medical identity theft. Highlights from the article include:

– 40% of hospitals have ten or more data breaches annually – TEN! Really? Are you kidding me?

– 85% of the hospitals reported that they’re not in compliance with HITECHs security provisions ( a new regulation that went into effect earlier this year, and among other things, expands upon HIPAA). Just goes to show that with all the legislation, our private health and personal information is still extremely vulnerable to identity theft.

– “Fraud resulting from exposure of health data [have] risen from 3% in 2008 to 7% in 2009, a 112% increase (Javelin Strategy & Research)

– Ponemon Institute reported that nearly 1.5 million Americans have been victims of medical identity theft. The estimated costs – $28.6 Billion

-Medical identity theft costs more than twice that of other types of identity theft (average cost $12,000) and it takes more than twice the time to detect as other types (Javelin Strategy & Research)

– Victims of identity theft can receive the wrong medical treatment, find that their health insurance is maxed out, and could become uninsurable for both life and health insurance coverage (World Privacy Forum)

– Data breaches are costly to organizations, as well. In 2009, the average cost of a data breach – per record – rose to $202, from $197 in 2008. Five-thousand records breached would cost the facility over $1 million (Ponemon Institute)

– From Jan 1 – March 9, 2010, nearly 75 thousand unencrypted health records were already breached, in spite of the requirements that data must be encrypted (HITECH and others) (US DHHS)

So, with the enactment of FACTA, HIPAA, HITECH, Red Flags Rule and more, health organizations and other industries still are not encrypting our medical or other personal information for that matter. Goes to show that all the legislation in the world doesn’t always properly motivate people/companies to do the right thing.  If you’ve been hospitalized within the last couple years, chances are, your private information is at risk. What are you doing to protect your personal information?