“Sometimes all it takes is one gesture to change the course of someone’s life.” Could be the fraudster’s mantra every time they send out a new phishing email! Or maybe combine it with, “Try, try again.” Because, eventually, someone is going to click that email which will drastically alter one if not many lives, and not for the better. Datavant, a health IT company that works with 70,000 hospitals and clinics across the U.S., revealed that its database was breached illegally back in May of 2024. What makes this particular data breach so devastating is that all of the victims are minors, and their information could be used for additional targeted phishing attacks, scams, or to commit identity fraud. Not exactly setting our youth up for success.
In an effort to steal credentials, the hackers sent out a wave of emails in a targeted phishing attack. According to a data breach notification letter from the Office of the Vermont Attorney General, the hackers gained unauthorized access to data contained within a single user’s inbox between May 8 and 9 of 2024. Even though Datavant managed to catch the intrusion quickly, an investigation after the fact revealed that the personal and financial information of more than 11,000 children was exposed.
What makes the identity of a child so valuable to a fraudster is that children typically have no credit histories, making it easier to open accounts and accumulate debt without detection. It’s a blank slate. Since it could be a long time before a child starts accessing any credit activity, the fraudster could have years to scheme in all kinds of fraud before even being questioned. Something that parents, and eventually the children, will have to monitor. Probably for the rest of their lives.
Excellent job by Datavant who, while working hard to combat email phishing schemes, noticed quickly the intrusion and made the necessary changes to minimize the damage.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “Thousands of children exposed in major data breach — including names, addresses and social security numbers” published by Tom’s Guide on December 9, 2024.
All it takes is one employee falling for a phishing email Hackers primarily target adults as their accounts as well as their personal and financial information is worth a lot more. However, even children can inadvertently end up being victims of cybercrime which is exactly what happened with a recent data breach that exposed the information of thousands of minors online.
As reported by Cybernews, the health IT company Datavant has revealed that it recently fell victim to a data breach back in May. However, instead of targeting its systems, the hackers behind this attack first went after the email accounts of its employees.