Anthem Hacked Exposing Potentially Millions of Customers to Identity Theft

One of the biggest data breaches in the history of the medical information field

According to an article on WHIO.com, industry officials are describing this latest hack as "one of the biggest data breaches in the history of the medical information field."

The WHIO.com article goes on to describe how hackers successfully stole the personal confidential information of both current and former customers. This means that you cannot ignore this alert even if you are no longer an Anthem customer.

Information stolen include:

• names
• birthdays
• medical IDs/Social Security numbers
• street addresses
• email addresses
• employment information
• income

Essentially everything someone would need to conduct Identity Theft against you may be at the hacker's fingertips, sold to others or even posted to the Internet for public view.

Are Ohio Anthem Customers Affected

It is currently unclear whether or not Anthem customers in Ohio were included in this breach however with Identity Theft and Credit Card Fraud on the rise we at Diversified recommend that you take steps in your personal life to protect yourself regardless of whether or not Ohio customers are affected.

What Can You Do?

There are a number of things you can do to protect yourself including (but not limited to):

1. Sign up for a credit monitoring service.
2. Review your credit card statements monthly (at minimum) for any unrecognized transactions. I check mine weekly!
3. Review your checking and savings account statements monthly (at minimum) for any unrecognized transactions. As with my credit card, I review and balance my bank accounts weekly.
4. Review your credit history with one (or more) of the three major credit bureaus at least once per year. Don't wait until you're trying to purchase a home or refinance your mortgage.
5. Use your credit card instead of your debit card when making purchases.
6. When purchasing over the Internet only purchase from known, legitimate vendors. You can often research a vendor using your favorite search engine and review customer testimonials on many sites.
7. Use strong, complex passwords for your login to the various websites. Do not use the same password for every website and periodically change your passwords.
8. Keep your computer anti-virus AND anti-malware tools up to date. Scan your computer weekly and promptly have it repaired if any infections or odd behavior is noticed such as running slow or being redirected to websites you did not type into the Internet browser.
9. Do not let anyone remote into your computer unless you know them! Scammers are currently calling the Dayton are pretending to be from Microsoft or other companies or claiming that they need to get into your PC to "fix" it.