by Geoff Fox
If you recently received an email from James McCarrick with a subject “Notice of Data Event” and deleted it, you might want to fish it out of your email trash can.
The email was sent out Monday evening, January 8.
The county announced the incident that month and The Hancock News ran a front page article in the November 30, 2022, issue.
At the time of the incident, some county services were unavailable a few days after, such as processing and/or issuance of permits and acceptance of financial payments like taxes and utilities.
The Town of Hancock office was not affected, but the Hancock Police Department did have some slight interruption as the Washington County Sheriff’ s Office had been affected.
In the letter, McCarrick noted the event happened on or about November 24, 2022, when Washington County discovered suspicious activity in its computer network environment.
The county took immediate steps to secure its network and started an investigation to determine the nature and scope of the incident.
The letter said through the investigation, the county found certain files may have been copied from the network without authorization between November 22 and November 24, 2022.
After identifying the files, the county undertook a “comprehensive and time-intensive” review of the files, determining the contents and whether sensitive information was present in the files at the time of the incident.
Upon completion of the review, Washington County worked diligently to reconcile that information with their records to confirm the appropriate contact information for potentially impacted individuals and then to provide notice to impacted individuals.
“While the specific data varies by individual, the affected information may include name, contact information, Social Security number, driver’ s license or state identification number, passport number, financial account information, payment card information, account username and password, medical information, and health insurance information,” McCarrick said in the letter.
The county also took steps to report the incident to federal law enforcement, and regulatory authorities, as required by law.
There were also notices mailed out by the county with more information about the event to those individuals for whom it has address information and, as an added precaution, is providing impacted individuals with credit monitoring and identity theft protection services at no cost.
Information on those services and instructions on how to enroll were included in the mailed letter.
If there are any questions or concerns, contact Washington County’ s dedicated assistance line at 1-833-918-0242, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. Eastern Time or you can write to Washington County at Attn: Public Information Officer, 100 West Washington Street, Ste. 2600, Hagerstown, MD 21740.
Washington County encourages potentially impacted individuals to remain vigilant against incidents of identity theft and fraud by reviewing their account statements and monitoring you free credit reports for suspicious activity and to detect errors.
The county is also providing potentially impacted individuals with contact information for three major credit reporting agencies, as well as providing advice on how to obtain a free credit report and how to place fraud alerts and security freezes on their credit file.
The three major credit reporting agencies contact information is as follows:
—Equifax, P.O. Box 105069, Atlanta GA 30348; 1-888-298-0045; www.equifax.com
—Experian P .O. Box 9554, Allen, TX 75013; 1-888-397-3742, www.experian.com
—TransUnion, P .O. Box 2000, Chester, PA 19016; 1-800-916-8800,; www.transunion.com
Potentially impacted individuals may also find information regarding identity theft, fraud alerts, security freezes and the steps they may take to protect their information by contacting the credit bureaus, the Federal Trade Commission or their state Attorney General.
The Federal Trade Commission can be contacted at: 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20580; www.identitytheft.gov; 1-877-ID-THEFT (1-877-438-4338); and TTY 1-866-653-4261.
Instances of known or suspected identity theft should also be reported to law enforcement or the individual’s state Attorney General.
