Many online shoppers have, unfortunately, become exposed to the devastation hackers can create when these villains scour the retailers’ databases to obtain buyers’ personal information. Target and Neiman Marcus, among other retailers, can certainly attest to the exorbitant destruction these scoundrels leave in their wake. This hacking generally heaps enormous financial wreckage on the retailers and immense emotional and possible financial damage on the consumers.
Unlike retail stores, however, the HealthCare.gov website stands to expand vastly the potential hacking damage to the consumers. First, this website requires one to provide a great deal more personal information. Included among this data are birth dates, personal health information, social security numbers, and income, the type of personal details hackers hunger for. Secondly, the administration has presented no compelling evidence that the website’s data is totally secure.
According to a recent Foxnews article, it is still all too easy for hackers to gain access to the website and purge the personal information. This article insists, “ObamaCare continues to leave consumer data vulnerable to theft months after security problems were first exposed. In the wake of a Christmas-season punctuated by massive hack attacks, consumers today awoke to find that the beleaguered new federal health insurance entitlement program ‘remains fundamentally flawed in ways that make it dangerous to people who use it.’ That was the characterization of security expert Kevin Johnson, reviewing for Reuters the findings of ‘white hat’ hackers who exposed gaping vulnerabilities in the federal data cache for ObamaCare. One of the friendly hackers will testify before a house panel today.”
