IDCARE as Australia’s national identity and cyber support community service has been engaged by Quantum Radiology to assist individuals who have concerns about the exposure of their personal information.
Quantum Radiology have prepared a response page on their website. Keep abreast of developments in relation to this cyber incident by visiting the Quantum Radiology Website.
IDCARE is an independent charity focused on supporting community members that have concerns about their personal, account or credential information.
We have been asked by Quantum Radiology to extend our support to impacted persons via the provision of expert advice and IDCARE specialist Case Management services are available.
Note that IDCARE's National Case Management specialises in cases where individuals believe they have experienced identity exploitation and misuse or have grave concerns about this risk.
IDCARE Case Managers work every day with community members who experience the compromise or exploitation of their personal information. They understand the real risks, concerns and needs of our community.
General recommendations are provided below. If you have specific concerns or seek further guidance on the recommendations, please submit an Individual Get Help Form and use the reference code provided in your notification.
The exposure of personal information such as name, date of birth, and contact details can heighten risks around scammer engagement. In fact, notifications about a breach itself can also heighten risks, as scammers can seek to impersonate the breached organisation when engaging with notified persons.
Remain scam vigilant by:
Assuming that communications you receive may be from a scammer.
Make your own enquiries using an alternative contact method to the one they used.
Never give remote access to your devices if asked by someone who engages you.
Keep your passwords and codes to yourself. Sharing these with scammers may mean you breach the terms and conditions of the account providers (such as your bank) and any chance of recovering funds highly unlikely.
Staying abreast of the latest scams by visiting Scamwatch or by subscribing to IDCARE’s free community awareness bulletin, Cyber Sushi
If you believe you have responded to a scam engagement, please complete an IDCARE Get Help form to request assistance.
IDCARE has formed response recommendations relating to the credentials potentially exposed as a result of the Quantum Radiology cyber incident. Quantum Radiology has informed IDCARE that not all attributes were exposed for each individual impacted. Please refer to your incident notification for specifics on what information of yours was exposed.
Potential Risks
Individually full name is a low risk identity attributes, however in combination with other information (such as address and phone number) scammers engaging you may appear more legitimate.
Recommendations
You may see an increase in targeted phishing attempts via email, text messaging or telephone calls, where the scammer uses details specific to you (such as your name and date of birth for “verification”). For more information on phishing watch IDCARE's what is phishing video here --> https://www.idcare.org/how-to-videos/what-is-phishing.
Never click on links in emails or text messages, no matter how legitimate they appear. Do not be pressured to respond, whether it is by email, text message or telephone. If you want to know whether an organisation tried to get in touch with you, contact the organisation yourself using contact details you know are correct.
Keep being scam vigilant and stay across the latest scams by regularly visiting idcare.org, connecting with our social media, and subscribing to our free online newsletter Cyber Sushi. Another great resource is Scamwatch that collate lots of information and alerts about scams.
Information
The phone number will be the one provided to Quantum Radiology. This could be your mobile or a landline/home phone number.
Potential Risks
The exposure of a phone number can leave you open to being targeted by spam or scam phone calls.
These can appear to be from legitimate phone numbers with local area codes.
They often claim to be an authority or organisation, such as the police, a telecommunication company or a government entity.
The scam-caller may frame the call with a sense of urgency, either in order to avoid a penalty (such as a payment or fine) or to receive a reward (such as a discount).
Scammers may send fraudulent SMS messages to the phone number. These may impersonate a legitimate organisation and include a link to a malicious download or scam website.
For more information on SMS scams please visit IDCARE's fact sheet --> https://www.idcare.org/fact-sheets/sms-scams.
Recommendations
Keep being super vigilant about scams, particularly telephone and SMS scams. Having a little bit of information exposed (such as your full name, address, date of birth, or phone number) can make the job of scammers much easier when convincing people about their deception.
Do not feel pressured to respond to a call or text message. If you think a call may be legitimate, hang up and call the organisation back using details that you know are correct. Do not accept that it is the real organisation because the Caller ID shows their correct number or name – these can be “spoofed” or masked to appear to be real.
Do not download apps or software (such as AnyDesk or TeamViewer), follow technology instructions, or allow remote access to your device to someone who has called you.
Do not click on links in text messages. Instead, contact the organisation using details you know are correct.
If you think a call may be legitimate, hang up and contact the organisation yourself using contact details you know are correct. Don’t automatically accept it’s the real organisation calling you because the caller ID shows their correct number or name: they can be manipulated to seem genuine.
Information
The physical address will be the one provided to Quantum Radiology.
Potential Risks
For most individuals, physical addresses are considered low risk identity attributes. However, in combination with other attributes (such as your full name, date of birth, email address and phone number) scammers engaging you via email, SMS or telephone may appear more legitimate.
Reports made to IDCARE of cyber criminals physically attending a person’s address are very low. Most scammers and cybercriminals are not in Australia.
Some people can have specific concerns about the exposure of their address details, such as survivors of family and domestic violence or as a result of other personal reasons.
Recommendation
You may wish to discuss your concerns around physical security. You may engage an IDCARE Case Manager with these concerns, please book a time via our Get Help for Individuals Form.
Information
This data breach event included the Medicare number supplied to Quantum Radiology.
Potential Risks
Your Medicare card number may be used as a form of identity verification in order to create accounts in your name, including financial accounts, where the institution does not require driver licence or passport details to be provided for the account to be established.
Recommendations
IDCARE recommends that if you believe that the exposure of your Medicare card number presents a broader risk to other accounts (such as financial accounts), then you may wish to apply for a completely new card number using the Services Australia MS011 form. More information on this process can be found online at Services Australia. When completing the form, you will need to select “transfer to a new card”, and have everybody who is listed on your current Medicare card complete their details if they also wish to transfer to a new card number.
You may also wish to consider credit reports and credit bans as additional protective measures to protect against credit misuse
A Report Cyber number has been issued by the Australian Cyber Security Centre in relation to this incident. It is ACSC-8811. This report number can be used to extend the credit bans.
Information
This includes practitioner name, title, speciality and provider number as well the medical centre contact details.
Potential Risks
A Medicare Provider Number is low-risk identity information, however in combination with other information criminals could use this to appear more legitimate in impersonation scams. This increases the risk of targeted phishing attempts. Targeted phishing attempts could be made via email, text messaging or telephone calls with the criminal using details specific to you and your company. These attempts may include requesting you to update your provider details including those contained in your HPOS account.
Recommendations
IDCARE recommends logging onto your Health Professional Online Services (HPOS) account to check:
If you manage your claims using Medicare Online via MyGov, IDCARE recommends:
If you manage you claims using Medicare Easyclaim IDCARE recommends to:
IDCARE as a registered charity does not ask individuals to donate or pay for our front line services. We are not a charity that can receive tax deductible donations.
We rely on organisations that care enough about you to care about us to keep our charitable service going. Proudly these organisations are displayed above and on our Subscriber Organisations page.
If you are asked for payment from someone claiming to be from IDCARE, please report this to us using our Report Phishing email.
IDCARE has access to the Department of Home Affairs Free Interpreting Service, delivered by the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS National). Access to the Free Interpreting Service is provided to assist you to communicate with non-English speaking people who hold a Medicare card. Please note that the service does not extend to New Zealand citizens or residents who do not hold an Australian Medicare card, or to tourists, overseas students or people on temporary work visas.
New Zealand Relay provides services to help Deaf, hearing impaired, speech impaired, Deafblind and standard phone users communicate with their peers.
A TTY user connects to New Zealand Relay via a toll-free number and types their conversation to a Relay Assistant (RA) who then reads out the typed message to a standard phone user (hearing person).
The RA relays the hearing person's spoken words by typing them back to the Textphone (TTY) User.
The National Relay Service (NRS) is an Australian government initiative that allows people who are deaf, hard of hearing and/or have a speech impairment to make and receive phone calls.
The NRS is available 24 hours a day, every day and relays more than a million calls each year throughout Australia.