As if the stricken Obamacare rollout needs any more problems, a new and potentially more dangerous “glitch” is beginning to appear – scam artists who are using the faulty website as a cover for their illegal activities.
Gerri Willis of Fox Business is reporting that scam artists are using the technological snafus inherent in the Obamacare website to target people’s bank accounts and other personal information.
“The federal government and state insurance commissioners have been warning about potential fraud for months and now it’s becoming clear that health care reform ushers in a perfect storm for identity thieves because the law requires consumers to share a wide range of personal data, including income,” Willis writes.
“The root of the problem is that the Obamacare exchange is NOT made up of one authoritative site where people can go and enroll for coverage. Instead, there is the official federal site, but also sites run by individual states and within each state there can be legitimate third-party sites that hook consumers up with insurance brokers. A simple Google search on the word, ‘Obamacare,’ for example turns up 59.7 million hits, and that complexity offers plenty of coverage for scammers.”
Some of the latest scams are occurring in states like Tennessee where con artists are calling people and asking for Social Security numbers under the guise of signing them up for a new Obamacare insurance card.
Others are randomly calling people and offering to walk them through the application process for $100.
Just for the record, the government is supplying Obamacare “navigators” for free; however, some of these people aren’t well-trained and are lacking appropriate screening.
Other scams involve consumers getting calls about needing to have their Medicare profile updated.
Even more problematic are those who are setting up scam websites to lure people into their site instead of an official exchange.
“These fake Obamacare websites are reminiscent of the bogus sites set up to rip off consumers after the government put in place multiple mortgage help programs during the housing meltdown,” Willis writes.
She was told by Christopher Budd, Trendmicro Communications Manager, that “a well-crafted scam is often undetectable until malicious activity is detected.”
So what does a consumer do to protect themselves?
First, don’t use Google to find an Obamacare website. Go to the official website www.healthcare.gov and follow what the experts call “a chain of trust.” This refers to the sites that you might be referred to by the government’s site, such as that of an insurer.
Willis also suggests that if you feel the need to check the legitimacy of a website, check for their digital certificate which will essentially prove that they have permission to sell insurance. Information about how to go about this can be found here.
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