What do criminals want with our health data — and what could they use it for?
Australians learned the scale of two major health data breaches this week, with some patients' personal information — including credit card details and test results — posted to the dark web. The motive behind the Optus breach was clear enough, but what criminals hope to exploit from our health data is less so, says Peter Lewis, director of the Centre for Responsible Technology, whose data was accessed in both the telco and Medibank Private breaches. Mr Lewis says health sector hackers may be out to blackmail people, damage the companies’ reputations, or sell on the vast pools of data to other criminals "There is the sense that they may try and blackmail people," he says. Identity theft is still the biggest risk for people whose health data has been hacked, but the intimacy of health information could also open some people up to blackmail if it were released — or make them less open with healthcare professionals, says Dr Rob Hosking, who chairs the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners' technology committee.
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