Are you an employee or patient of UConn Health? If so, your personal information — including social security number and medical information — may have been accessed by unauthorized parties.
Every day, consumers and employees entrust sensitive information to businesses. Accordingly, businesses such as UConn Health — and the vendors they hire to manage their information — owe a duty to securely maintain that information in confidence, and they must maintain sufficient safeguards to prevent criminals from accessing that information.
Unfortunately, UConn Health, a regional hospital system with thousands of employees and innumerable current and former patients, announced in a press release in February 2019 that “an unauthorized third party illegally accessed a limited number of employee email accounts.” UConn Health stated that it determined on December 24, 2018, that “the accounts contained some personal information, including some individuals’ names, dates of birth, addresses and limited medical information, such as billing and appointment information” and that “[t]he accounts also contained the Social Security numbers of some individuals.”
News coverage of the incident reveals that “UConn Health has identified around 326,000 people whose personal information was contained in a compromised email account and the information included Social Security numbers for around 1,500 people.”
Any potential data breach should be taken very seriously, as the personal harm that can result is limitless and may include fraud or identity theft. Here, personal information has fallen into the hands of criminals and may soon be, if it has not already been, used for fraudulent purposes.
Attorneys at Finkelstein, Blankinship, Frei-Pearson & Garber, LLP have successfully recovered millions of dollars on behalf of data breach victims. We are currently investigating this matter, as well as other data breaches. If you believe that your information may have been unlawfully accessed, please contact us to discuss your legal options.