According to a new FBI warning, scammers are targeting both patients and healthcares in a new fishing attack designed to steal your sensitive personal and financial data.
As the Belping Computer reported, the Federal Law Enforcement Agency recently announced a public service announcement that scammers and other cybercriminals are currently impersonating health insurance companies and their related fraud investigators in an attempt to steal consumer data.
According to the FBI, scammers behind this new campaign are sending fashing emails and text messages with the hope that potential victims will disclose their “safe health information, medical records, personal financial details” or even “pay for more than a fake service or pay for non -covered services.”
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The brand imitation for cyber criminals is nothing new, but directly targeting patients, they can force some people to give up information that may also be used to steal fraud or medical identity.
Given that providing sensitive health care information through email or text is a clear violation in most cases, it is a huge red flag that you are not dealing with with a real health insurance company or their fraud investigators.
Nevertheless, this to issue a public service for the FBI, this means that it is not a risk of taking lightly, and some patients and even healthcarers have fallen to this phishing attack.
How to stay safe from phishing
(Image Credit: wk1003mike/shutter stock)
The FBI has provided some guidance on the issue in the announcement of its public service.
Starting ones, you should always be careful with unauthorized emails, text messages and calls that ask for your personal information. Likewise, if you come to one of these email or messages, you should not click on their link because they can be malicious.
To protect your medical accounts from scammers and hackers, you want to use a strong and unique password for them all. You never want to reuse the password and if you have problems with complicated passwords for your accounts or remembering them, you would like to consider using an excellent password manager instead.
Since phishing messages may contain malware or other viruses, you want to make sure that you are using the best anti -virus software on your Windows PC or the best Mac anti -virus software on your Apple computer.
There is a lot that hackers and scammers can do with sensitive medical information and personal data, so I suspect this is the last time we will see such an attack. For this reason, you want to make sure you are more careful when dealing with any email or text messages coming from your health care provider.
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