Health Equity, a company that provides Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs), Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs) and 401(l) retirement accounts recently disclosed that it had suffered a data breach affecting 4,300,000 of its customers. The compromised data includes names, phone numbers and, most significantly, Social Security numbers which puts the people whose information was stolen in serious danger of identity theft.
Last year, there were more than 1,800 reported data breaches and probably many more that were not reported affecting 422 million people. The question is not if you will become a victim of a data breach. The question is when.
So what can you do to protect yourself from these data breaches that will be occurring?
TIPS
Freezing your credit is also something everyone should do. It is free and easy to do. In addition, it protects you from someone using your identity to obtain loans or make large purchases even if they have your Social Security number. If you have not already done so, put a credit freeze on your credit reports at all of the major credit reporting agencies. Here are links to each of them with instructions about how to get a credit freeze:
Health Equity is notifying its affected customers and offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services through Equifax for free for two years. The notifications will be sent on August 9th and will include information about how to apply for the free credit monitoring and identity theft protection.
A class action on behalf of the victims of the data breach has been filed in federal court in Utah, alleging negligence on the part of Health Equity. I will provide more information about the lawsuit as it progresses through the courts.
Finally, be wary whenever you are contacted following a data breach by anyone offering assistance. Scammers will often contact victims of data breaches posing as governmental agencies or private companies claiming they can assist in protecting the victims when all they really will do is convince you to pay them for worthless services.
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