 TITLE: How to Prevent Medical Identity Theft CONTENT: How Does Medical Identity Theft Happen?\n---------------------------------------\nMedical identity theft can happen when someone physically steals your information, such as your wallet with your health insurance card in it or medical records that you threw out. The thief often isn't a random person.\nAccording to a 2015 study by the Ponemon Institute, about half the time, medical identity theft occurs between family members. Most often, this is done without the person's knowledge. However, 23% of people said they knowingly shared their medical information with a friend or family member—a type of \"friendly fraud\" that can still lead to mixed up medical records.\nMedical identity theft can also happen when hackers steal information from health insurance companies and medical providers. In fact, medical records can be a juicer target than financial accounts. In 2017, Experian found that credit and debit card information could be sold on the dark web for up to $110 per account. At the same time, medical records were going for up to $1,000, depending on how complete the records were and whether it was a single record or entire database. END