Anthem Breach: What Customers Should Know
[caption id=”attachment_1976" align=”alignright” width=”530"]
Darron Cummings | AP | A pedestrian walks past the corporate headquarters of health insurer Anthem, in Indianapolis.[/caption]
News broke last night that Anthem Inc., the nation’s second largest health insurer, was hit by hackers. This is a big concern for all customers of Anthem. They’re estimating that roughly 80 million people are affected by this loss of data. Customers’ Social Security Numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth have all been made accessible to the attacker(s).
What Anthem Customers Should Do
Anthem plans to provide a credit monitoring service for all those affected by this breach, however, this may take some time. As a customer, the best course of action right now is to proactively purchase a credit monitoring service and obtain your credit report until Anthem can provide this for you. Attackers likely have enough information between this breach and social media to impersonate you when speaking with banks or credit card companies.
Immediate Steps You Can Take
- Keep a close eye on financial records for any unique charges or changes to your account.
- Be wary if you receive unsolicited phone calls, emails, or physical mail that ask for more data, such as credit card or bank account information.
- If a phone call appears to originate from a known source, go to the website of the originating company to obtain the phone number and call directly to confirm the request.
Long Term Repercussions
Unfortunately, when an attacker gets access to this kind of data, it is not a short-term issue. As long as the attacker maintains access, the risk of financial loss or identity theft remains. Once obtained, this data could then be held by the attacker for a long period of time before he/she decides to distribute on the black market.
Ongoing Precautions
- Continue to review your credit and financial records.
- Maintain a heightened state of suspicion when receiving phone calls, e-mails, or physical mail.
- If you believe you may be be a victim of identity theft, immediately reach out to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. Resources are provided below.
www.ic3.gov — FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center
