SC data breach ‘about the worst you can get’

Hackers could have in their possession taxpayer information from the S.C. Department of Revenue that would allow crooks to take over bank accounts, file for bogus tax refunds or get fraudulent loans, national data security experts said Monday.

“This is about the worst you can get,” said Avivah Litan, an ID theft analyst with the information technology research group Gartner. Added Rick Holland, an analyst with Forrester Research, “If I were a resident of South Carolina, I would be pretty concerned.”

S.C. leaders are trying to resolve a cyber attack affecting four times as many people as all previous S.C. data breaches in the past seven years.

For complete information read the October 26, 2012 Press ReleaseThe S.C. Department of Revenue announced on October 26, 2012 that approximately 3.6 million Social Security numbers and 387,000 credit and debit card numbers have been exposed in a cyber attack . This web page you are currently reading serves as one of many modes to communicate the latest information available to affected or potentially affected parties.

Anyone who has filed a South Carolina tax return since 1998 is urged to:

Visit www.protectmyid.com/scdor and use the activation code SCDOR123

Experian’s ProtectMyID™ Alert is designed to detect, protect and resolve potential identity theft, and includes daily monitoring of all three credit bureaus. The alerts and daily monitoring services are provided for one year, and consumers will continue to have access to fraud resolution agents and services beyond the first year. For complete information read the October 26, 2012 Press Release.