By Janet Stoica

I swear if I receive one more business letter advising me that my personal information has been stolen I will lose my mind.  Just this week I received another informational “courtesy letter” from a local hospital’s computer software vendor advising me that their computer systems had been hacked and that all my personal and health information had been stolen by a group on the dark web.  The information taken was my name, address, social security number, driver’s license number, and health information.

That’s all, just all my personal information.  No big deal, right?  That’s right. Who cares if the devious minds of foreign-paid computer geeks half-way around the world have found a glitch in the hospital vendor’s (or insert any company’s name here) software system?  The hospital’s entire patient/customer file system has been electronically carted away. It was simply given away. Does the software company care?  Maybe, because it shows how vulnerable they were, but why should they?  It’s no big deal.  Happens every day, doesn’t it? They all react instead of acting to prevent this type of situation.

Just like gun violence. We’ve become so inured to it that it’s a common everyday occurrence. Whatever!  We have accepted that all of our personally identifiable information is now in the hands of whoever wants to pay for it so they can check out the easiest names to use and can now open charge accounts, take loans, and basically ruin our credit ratings so we are reduced to crazed idiots trying to repair our good credit scores. 

If course, if your credit score is in the dumper anyway, you’re probably glad to have your personal information compromised so you can forever use that as an excuse when trying to apply for a future loan or credit card.  

When I received my latest security breach letter, I was amazed and rip-snorting angry. Why is this still happening?  Why indeed.  Oh yes, and thank you so very much for providing me with a credit-monitoring service for the next two years.  I have so many of these free offerings from hospitals, health-care companies, hacked credit card accounts, etc. that they must all be piggy-backed upon each other until the end of time. 

What makes a company not ensure that its software is fully protected from dark webbers and other scam artists who want access to your personal info??   This is absolutely ridiculous!  I guess they can pay their CEOs gigantic salaries, bonuses, and stock options and to heck with protecting their customer’s/patient’s information.  If they had purchased and installed iron-clad protection software they wouldn’t have to give us free credit-monitoring services after the breach. It certainly doesn’t cost these companies very much to give us credit-monitoring services vs. paying for a strong firewall. Oh, they’re just saving their stockholders’ money.  They simply don’t want to pay for an A+ rated firewall that would prevent these sinister con artists from accessing our information.

And, yes, I’m going to say this ... the Federal and State governments should make iron-clad protection software mandatory for every institution and company that operates in the United States. Just like auto insurance, software theft prevention should be absolutely mandatory. It’s too bad there aren’t responsible companies out there who are pro-active and secure.  There should be huge fines and penalties for those ignorant boards of directors who only care about their personal stock and pocketbooks—and I mean BIG fines.  Like $5 million each time a compromise happens. Maybe that will wake them up and their stockholders will cry foul but to heck with them.  They’ve obviously invested in a company that only cares for its own interests and how it can payback its investors.  Fie on them and the horse they rode in on!  

Here are two small free activities you can do to protect yourself immediately:

 Freeze your credit information with the 3 major credit bureaus. This will prevent any inquiries to your credit history. You will be asked to provide a password and answer security questions that only you would know the answers to.  It’s easy and worth the peace of mind to do so.  www.transunion.com    www.experian.com      www.equifax.com    When you access these sites, the companies will ask you to pay for an upgrade, just use the free service.  Don’t forget, however, that if you apply for a credit card, loan, mortgage, etc., you will have to quickly go online and un-freeze your accounts so your credit history will be viewable. You can use their provided calendar to request the length of time to un-freeze.

 With the influx of foreign military software (originally meant for military tracking apps but now being sold internationally) enabling direct spyware to be placed on everyone and anyone’s cellphones, be sure to reboot (shut down & restart) your cellphone daily. If the government decides to use these tracking and cellphone reviewing apps, your cellphone is in for a workout and you won’t even know it. Your Fourth Amendment rights are being chipped away daily and until our Senators and Representatives pass strong legislation preventing government software from implanting itself into your cellphone, doing a daily reboot can be extremely beneficial to you. It’s not 100% effective but definitely disrupts malware from running in the background and tracking you.

Maybe it’s time to return to landlines ... Verizon are you still there?