Friday, Oct. 26, 2012

NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. -- The South Carolina Department of Revenue has announced that millions of Social Security numbers and debit/credit card numbers have been compromised.

This affects anyone who has filed a South Carolina tax return since 1998, including 3.6 million Social Security numbers and 387,000 credit and debit card holders.

The news release says most of the credit cards are protected by "strong encryption deemed sufficient under the demanding credit card industry standards."

The state will offer the estimated millions affected by this with one year of credit card monitoring and identity theft protection.

Madiant, an information security company, has been brought in to assist the investigation and help put better strongholds on access to the system.

Two hacks were made in mid-September, which is how the hacker got the data. Someone attempted to access the system twice on Oct. 16 and on another day in August. The S.C. Department of Revenue says the hole in the system was fixed Oct. 20.

“The number of records breached requires an unprecedented, large-scale response by the Department of Revenue, the State of South Carolina and all our citizens,” said Gov. Nikki Haley in a news release. “We are taking immediate steps to protect the taxpayers of South Carolina, including providing one year of credit monitoring and identity protection to those affected.”

If you have filed a tax return in South Carolina since 1998, call 1-866-578-5422 to get an activation code. Once you have your code, you can visit protectmyid.com/scdor to sign up for a year of identity theft protection with Experian.

*Note: We are hearing reports that nobody can get through due to technical phone difficulties and "a high volume of calls."

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