SALT LAKE COUNTY, Utah — A Utah family believed their information was used for a $12,000 emergency room visit in California, and believes it might have to do with the Granite School District breach.
"They can ruin her entire life just with that information,” said Heidi Long. “That’s a scary thought."
Her daughter, Kaydence Walker, is a seventh-grade student at Matheson Jr. High.
Thousands of families like Lang’s are dealing with something they had never imagined -- their information was leaked when Granite School District was hacked. Long was not the viewer who reached out but is working to deal with what happened as well.
"Our investigation determined that any student that’s ever been enrolled within Granite School District was impacted,” said Andrea Stringham, with the district.
Long has received multiple emails from the school district, keeping her apprised of what was happening. According to those notifications, some of the details compromised were "name, address and phone number, any associated health information, grades and assessments results, in some cases social security numbers,” she read from the email.
"A little nervous about someone random out there has all my stuff,” said Walker.
The district told FOX 13 that the breach happened because an employee downloaded the wrong encrypted file. So, they said they have beefed up their cybersecurity and increased education for employees, so this doesn’t happen again.
"We have heard of some families who believe that their information has been used to attempt to open up credit cards, get loans taken out, have medical services completed,” explained Stringham. “Unfortunately, there’s no way we can investigate and determine exactly where their information is compromised from.”
The district has been working with third-party companies to set up credit monitoring services to keep tabs on where their data might be used. There is a page on the Granite School District websitewith more resources and guidelines.
Even though Long doesn’t blame her daughter’s school for what happened, it’s still a hard pill to swallow.
"It’s scary, it scares me to think that at any time, they can do anything with her information, and she’s so young,” added Long.
