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Thousands of Patient Records Held for Ransom in Ontario Home Care Data Breach, Attackers Claim (www.cbc.ca)
CBC reports: The detailed medical histories and contact information of possibly tens of thousands of home-care patients in Ontario are allegedly being held for ransom by thieves who recently raided the computer systems of a health-care provider. CarePartners, which provides home medical care services on behalf of the Ontario government, announced last month that it had been breached. It said only that personal health and financial information of patients had been "inappropriately accessed," and did not elaborate further. However, a group claiming responsibility for the breach recently contacted CBC News and provided a sample of the data it claims to have accessed, shedding new light on the extent of the breach. The sample includes thousands of patient medical records with phone numbers and addresses, dates of birth, and health card numbers, as well as detailed medical histories including past conditions, diagnoses, surgical procedures, care plans and medications for patients across the province.
Once again, a company that is supposed to protect sensitive personal information fails to provide available security measures and exposes sensitive personal information to a host of bad actors. This kind of neglect usually is not at the IT level, but all the way at the top.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
That's not true at all. From: https://www.healthcare.gov/coverage/pre-existing-conditions/ "No insurance plan can reject you, charge you more, or refuse to pay for essential health benefits for any condition you had before your coverage started." It's one of the reasons health insurance is so expensive since you can just wait until you need it.
This kind of neglect usually is not at the IT level, but all the way at the top.
HAH. While I am not certain about this particular company, when these companies are only engaged in neglect, it's a win. (There are some good staff at some of the companies, but they generally have to keep their noses down because of the culture. If you did real undercover inspections of elder care in Ontario you would be terrified.)
In the US, you can't even charge pregnant women more that wait until up to two months after birth to buy coverage, and the coverage is back dated by up to two months. My sister waited until after my poor niece was born early and had to spend two weeks in the hospital. She saved thousands by not buying insurance, abused the system, then dropped coverage after the first month since it covered everything she needed. It's too easy to game the system.
Wait, you don't think your health insurance provider knows your medical history? Do you think they just blindly pay whatever is submitted without knowing what they are paying for and why they are paying it?
Why is it every time healthcare in the US is talked about, foreign trolls come out of the woodwork?
In the US, you cannot charge more for preexisting conditions. You can't even charge more for voluntary preexisting conditions such as pregnancy, self-harm, or alcoholism.
If you have a policy that does not include pre-existing conditions (you don't since it is illegal), then the insurer will both do an examination of you and ask your medical history. No need for 'leaked' records. If you lie, that is fraud.
Screw the "civilized" way of dealing with this kind of filth. Track them down, find them, kill them.
This kind of scum is cancer, and must be delth with accordingly.
This isn't holding something for ransom. When you pay ransom, you (in theory) get your property back safe and sound and the culprits no longer have it. Here, the culprits have a copy of the data, and they say that if they're given money, they won't release it. Paying them won't make their copy vanish; there's no guarantee they won't take the money and then sell the data to other people. This is simple extortion. I guess that doesn't sound as exciting in a headline, though.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
That's actually why the ACA had a penalty for not being insured. Trump and the GOP did away with that hoping to make it all blow up since they couldn't manage to repeal it properly after trying 85 times.
In turn, the penalty was a problem because too many red states did their best to make it hard to get coverage.
Right. The only hope was single payer instead of hacky heavy-handed laws. People would have complained less about single payer than being forced to buy shitty, expensive insurance.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
They will find it on Facebook where you posted pics and talked about your broken leg.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock