AMHERST, N.Y. — 500,000 people received a letter from Practicefirst stating that they are victims “of a data breach incident” that happened in December,” and the breach may have affected their personal information.
Viewers reached out to 7 Eyewitness News because they did not know if this letter from the Amherst based medical management company was a scam. We made calls, and we can confirm it is not a scam.
Ashley Stcyr of Newfane received the letter in the mail on Tuesday morning from Practicefirst.
“I opened it, and it was weird that there was not return address of anything on it,” Stcyr said. “It was addressed from a business I’ve never heard of before, so that kind of threw me off. I don’t know who my doctors use for medical billing purposes, and I’m sure nobody else thinks about that either.”
The letter states some of the personal information that was leaked can include medical information, social security number, credit card information, and more. After reading the letter, Stcyer posted in a local Facebook group, and dozens of people responded that they got the same letter.
“It made me nervous! Where did they get my name and my address from? They got it from somewhere to link the two together,” Stcyer said.
Practicefirst sent a statement to 7 Eyewitness News that states they are not aware of any misuse or fraud of any information after the breach in December, but they wanted to make anyone who could possibly be affected aware through these letters.
If you received a letter from Practicefirst, you are asked to follow the directions on the letter to protect yourself. There's an option to sign up for two years of no-cost credit and identity monitoring. If you have any questions, you can call their professionally staffed call center's number at 1-855-731-3351.
