The South Carolina Department of Revenue’s database was hacked into by some Russians (see I told you they were awesome hackers.) So if you filed an income tax form in the state in the last 4 years someone, and more than likely more than one someone, now has your Social Security Number and or your credit card number. 3.6 million Social Security numbers and 387,000 credit card numbers are on the loose, meaning that many folks are at risk for Identity Theft and maybe some shopping done with their credit cards.
The breaches in the SCDoR computers occurred back in August and they didn’t know it until October 10th. They fixed the problem by the 20th and then the public was told about on the 26th. I bet the only reason we found out at all was that some newspaper or TV station got the info and the State had to go public.
To help ease the minds of 3.6 million taxpayers the state is going to provide 1 year of Identity Theft Protection from Experian (ProtectMyID.com) for free. Let’s see, how is that going to work, the state is funding the program, the state gets its funds from the taxpayers like me, so I’m really paying for my own ID Theft Protection. Not only will I be paying for my own, but I’ll be paying for a whole bunch of others folks as well, here is why.
It was announced that to get the theft protection you needed to call a toll free number to get an activation code. Go ahead and try to call a toll free number around the same time 3.599999 million other people do and what do you think will happen, that’s right, a busy signal. They announced that they were adding more operators and now instead of a busy signal people were getting a recording saying call back later because they were experiencing a higher than normal call load! Duh!
Yesterday I was going to try and give the number a call, so I did a Google search to find out what it was and I landed on a Columbia TV station’s webpage that had the number. They also gave out the code that you got when, or if, you finally got through to the number: SCDOR123. Not anything special that proved you were one of the 3.6 million, just a code, SCDOR123, that sounds like the director of the South Carolina Department of Revenue’s secret password (and maybe that is what got us into this whole situation to begin with.)
Because they are not checking to actually see if you might have been affected by the hacking before giving out a code to sign up for protection, any Tom, Dick or Harry from anywhere can sign up with the code of SCDOR123. So now the state, and by extension me, will probably have to foot the ID Protection bill for over 20 million folks. If you would like a year’s worth of free ID Theft Protection just go to http://www.protectmyid.com/scdor and enter the code SCDOR123.
You’re welcome.