There has been a lot of emphasis lately on nationalizing health records so that a person can go to any doctor in the country and he or she can just pull them up on the computer. Sure, this sounds like a good idea in theory, but it could also go horribly wrong. Consider what recently happened to the Virginia DHP Prescription Monitoring Program, a database designed, ironically enough, to prevent prescription fraud.
In early May, a hacker was able to successful break into the program’s secure records site and encrypt all of the data it held. Said hacker then deleted the original versions of the data and demanded $10 million in exchange for the password required to break the encryption. He or she also sent a kind note saying “I’ll go ahead and put this baby out on the market and accept the highest bid,†if the company refused to pay up.
So now not only do we have identity thieves, we have third party identity thief suppliers. How comfortable will that make you feel when you call to make your next appointment? Although all out extortion may be an extreme case, though not an isolated one, this is just another reminder that your private records are not quite so private as you believe them to be.
Not only can medical records contain a list of prescription drugs you are taking, they can also include your name and address, your birth date and your Social Security number, not to mention billing information and further sensitive history. We would like to think that anything with a confidential stamp on it would stay that way, but the truth of the matter is, you have to take precautions in case any of this data somehow happens to get out.
One relatively easy thing you can do is buy an identity theft protection service. While it won’t keep any extortionists from ransoming your information, it could keep them from selling it if they don’t get their suitcase full of cash. Sure, they can still post the data up for sale online; but their cronies will not be the only ones that see it, your identity protection service could as well. Then soon even more eyes could show up, such as the ones belonging to your local law enforcement department.
Since these plans have access to a much greater amount of data than the average citizen does and also have high tech tools to sort through it, this is about as safe as you can get, barring moving to outer Mongolia and destroying all of your identification. Actually, even then, you will still exist in electronic files that you don’t even know about.
Forget it. An identity protection plan is a much better way, whether an extortionist gets hands on your data or not, you’ll get the peace of mind to rest easy no matter who is trying to game the system. At least it won’t be your bank account that has to take the fall.