Cyber Attack Steals Personal Information in South Carolina
Several weeks ago, on October 10th, the South Carolina Department of Revenue became the victim of a widespread cyber-attack that resulted in the theft of over 3.6 million social security numbers and the personal information and details for over 387,000 credit and debit cards. The FBI has said that the attacks definitely took place from outside the United States, and they are continuing the investigation in hopes of being able to at least narrow down the hackers’ location to a specific country, and hopefully naming actual suspects in time. They do know that there were attempts to breach the system’s security back in August and September of this year, possibly by the same party or parties who successfully breached the system most recently.
The South Carolina Department of Revenue has requested that anyone who has filed a tax return in the state from 1998 to the present take the necessary precautions to protect their personal information by monitoring their bank accounts, credit card accounts, and any other place where someone might be able to use a stolen social security number or personal bank information. They also warned that these citizens should continuously monitor their credit accounts from all three major credit agencies for at least the next several years, and perhaps longer since it can take many years for an identity thief to use stolen personal information and for extensive damage to a person’s credit score and identity to be done. The South Carolina Department of Revenue has also stated that they will provide assistance to anyone who becomes a victim to this security breach because it is their responsibility to take care of their taxpayers.
For more information, see the following sites:
http://www.carolinalive.com/news/story.aspx?id=818339#.UNCnRHdYSvg
You may visit http://www.protectmyid.com/default.aspx?PageTypeID=HomePage111&SiteVersionID=940&SiteID=100330&sc=676980&bcd= and enter SCDOR123 in the activation box to check your information.