COLORADO SPRINGS — According to the Identity Theft Resource Center we are on a record pace for data breaches this year in the United States after more than 1,800 were reported in each of the last two years.
So, there’s a good chance you might be getting a data breach notification letter in the mail, but how do you know if it’s legit? What should you do next?
Consumer protection experts say your first call should be directly to the company or organization where you believe your data was breached to confirm the letter or notification is real,but one of our viewers tried that and didn’t get solid answers so she reached out to our newsroom for help.
In this case the letter she got in the mail says her family was a part of a large nationwide medical record data breach.
”At first I thought it was another scam or something you know? I was like, why was my stuff breached and not to mention an eight year old and a five year old at the same time,” said Jody, a News5 viewer who recently received multiple data breach letters in the mail.
She says this letter she got in the mail from a company called Reventics was a cause for concern. When her local medical offices couldn’t provide her with answers, she called the number in the letter which left her even more on edge.
”They gave me this story about how all of our stuff was out there on the dark web and we needed to give them all our information and make profiles and they would protect our information for a year,” Jody said.
Unsure of what to do next, Jody reached out to News5 about the situation that seemed suspicious, but after looking into it with the experts at the Better Business Bureau it appears this Reventics letter and data breach are real currently impacting at least 250,000 people nationwide.
”The scary part like I said is to try to figure out what I can do, who to call, and who to trust,” said Jody.
Adah Rodriguez at the Better Business Bureau of Southern Colorado says Jody did the right thing working to verify the legitimacy of the data breach letter because large breaches like this are also a breeding ground for fraudsters.
”Because the scammers have found out about this large data breach they then take advantage of it,” warned Rodriguez. “They send mailers out to thousands of consumers that may not even use this company claiming your information has been compromised providing a phone number or link or website and they want you to go there and give up your personal information.”
So if you get a data breach letter in the mail and you aren’t able to verify you were actually the victim of a breach or where it happened, consumer protection experts say it might be best to take extra steps to monitor your data and credit on your own. You can do that by using tools provided by the Federal Trade Commision and the Colorado Attorney General’s Office at StopFraudColorado.gov.
”Unfortunately kind of assume the worst so you are protecting yourself as quickly as possible. You do not need to use the credit monitoring that they offer in the letter. You can monitor your credit yourself,” said Rodriguez.
During this process News5 learned according to Critical Insight, a cybersecurity company, last year alone nearly 50 million americans were impacted by a medical record data breach of some kind. Jody says knowing the size of this problem only makes it more frustrating.
”We are all going through the same thing, but it doesn’t make it feel any better that all of us have been breached and our lives have been put out there and we don’t know what’s actually happening with it,” said Jody.
If you are concerned about being targeted by identity theft criminals, you may want to consider freezing your credit. Here is a link to previous coverage on how to do that and some steps to take if you believe your sensitive information has been compromised.
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