Scammers looking to hack mobile phones for patient medical info.

Mobile phones may be the newest emerging battleground in combating widespread heisting of people’s medical identities. Two recent reports provide telling evidence.

More than 25 million people will have their medical and/or personal info stolen from their health providers between now and 2019, says a new report by Accenture. That’s one of every 13 patients.

Mobile transactions form the newest arena for ID theft in general, adds a report by IDology. The report focuses on broader ID theft, with some healthcare organizations taking part. Still, it’s a warning of emerging vulnerability for healthcare providers – and their patients.

Some 8 percent of polled organizations report rising mobile scamming this year, up from 3 percent last year. Spoofing, account takeovers and device cloning are favored tactics.

“Fraudsters have become quite skilled at exploiting the many nuances that accompany mobile devices — from the millions of change events to the increasing ability of fraudsters to attack mobile technology with methods similar to what we found in these survey results — porting, spoofing, cloning and more,” IDology says.

More organizations plan to invest in mobile-based transactions, yet nearly half say they lack resources to properly manage mobile security, IDology says.

“Mobile fraud has become increasingly top of mind for businesses as the use of smart devices gains in popularity and usage. With the convenience of smart devices being able to access a consumer’s personal accounts across multiple industries, security is becoming more and more of a priority for organizations of all sizes,” IDology says.

It takes only a small leap to see how mobile hacking and security will increasingly become next big fraud problem for the healthcare industry and their patients.

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December 7, 2015 By James Quiggle, Coalition Against Insurance Fraud