Change Healthcare Data Breach: What You Need to Know for Your Social Security Number and More

It’s been a scary year for protecting your personal information. A breach at AT&T announced this summer affected nearly all customers — not to be confused with another AT&T data breach disclosed this spring. There was a breach at Roku and a settlement for Cash app customers after data breaches. And this month, a massive cyber attack on National Public Data was confirmed.

However, it’s hard to keep track of where your data is at risk, making me feel a bit like a cartoon character figuring out which hole to plug next. In the middle of it all, there was also a data breach at Change Healthcare, which is owned by UnitedHealth. This affected a massive amount of people; no exact number was given, but Change Healthcare says “the affected data could cover a substantial proportion of people in America,” and the US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) noted cyber attack. “unprecedented scale”.