ARGH. First, a year ago, we had information hacked off of Sony's servers, things like names, credit card numbers, account information, things like that.
NOW the state of Utah has been incompetent enough to install a server that didn't have the proper security measures in place, allowing hackers easier access . . . to all sorts of information, on my, my daughter, and 24,000 other Utah Medicaid people. I'm guessing there's more people on Medicaid in Utah than that, so it wasn't everybody; the state's response that they are going to send letters out to everyone affected, and provide credit monitoring services to those whose Social Security Numbers were exposed, indicates the same.
What is WITH these companies, entities, agencies, that are trusted with all this information, that they screw up like this? With Sony, they seem to have had a company-wide lax attitude; in Utah's case, it seems to be some technician's error of either installing a server that shouldn't be installed for such a secure situation, or perhaps someone ordered the wrong type of server and the errors began earlier. Human error, but . . . there should be triple checks, at least, on this kind of thing!
I am feeling very vulnerable, and very violated/exposed . . . .
16 years ago I had someone steal my checkbook and a few things from my wallet, and then they got a woman accomplice and made up a fake id with my name and her picture, and they went around writing bad checks, like for $200 of groceries, and other things. So I know a little about what can happen, although I know identity thieves can do worse.
How safe is YOUR state's Medicaid information? Or your health insurance company's system? Or your credit card company's, for that matter, I believe some big companies recently had hacks as well.
I think that something needs to change, as these are so frequent as to be ridiculous. Perhaps harsher consequences for both the hackers, and companies caught with their pants down. Perhaps laws to create or incentivize better checks and balances on this stuff, at least for government, if not for health insurance companies and other sensitive information as well.
Then again, hackers will get into almost anywhere, unless perhaps you have a government-sized budget to protect a Pentagon-level system. And even that one isn't perfect, no system is.
More attention needs to be paid to these things, because I'm fed up (wait, more attention needs to be paid because of ME? Lol, I'm not that arrogant, that's not exactly how I meant it.)
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