600,000 Medicare beneficiariesâ data exposed in cyber breach: What to do now
More than 600,000 Medicare recipients are being notified their personal information was potentially exposed in a data breach.
Letters from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are alerting 612,000 beneficiaries of a May data breach involving Progress Software’s MOVEit Transfer Software operated by Maximus Federal Services Inc., a Medicare contractor.
The compromised information could potentially include name, Social Security number or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, date of birth, mailing address, telephone number and email address, Medicare Beneficiary Identifier or Health Insurance Claim Number, driver’s license number, medical history and notes, healthcare provider and prescription information, health insurance claims and policy/subscriber information and health benefits and enrollment information.
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Beneficiaries whose information was compromised are being offered 24 months of free credit monitoring from Experian. It’s also recommended Medicare recipients who are notified apply for a free credit report to check for discrepancies. If there are issues, it’s recommended you file a police report with local law enforcement and file a complaint with the FTC by contacting them on the web at www.ftc.gov/idtheft, by phone at 1-877-IDTHEFT (1-877-438-4338), or by mail at Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Response Center, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20580.
Beneficiaries should continue to use their existing Medicare card unless they receive further notifications, the agency said.