Another week, another data breech notification letter…

This past week I received notice that my radiologist’s office experienced a “data security event”. Name, social security number, date of birth, driver’s license, incriminating pictures of my herniated lumbar disc, etc., could have been obtained. I’ve lost count of how many similar letters I, my spouse, and my children have received over the past years. For early ones, I took them up on their offer of one free year of credit monitoring. Several years ago, I placed a credit freeze on all three of the credit monitoring bureaus for everyone in my family.

Now I am wondering if I even need to react to this latest data breech, or future ones.  The free one-year service offers “basic dark web monitoring” for name, DOB, SSN, email, and also offers “change of address monitoring”. But other than those features, my credit freezes exceed what they offer. If I sign up with “epiq Privacy Data Solutions ID” to use the one-year free monitoring, I have to enter my SSN, DOB, email address, name, & address, exactly the information I do not want to be spreading out to additional companies who could be broken into in the future. I do realize this whole thing could be a scam to obtain my SSN, DOB, email address, name, & address; the letter came from a “Secure Processing Center” in another state and had a header logo and correct lead physician name of the local radiology office. I could call the local office to verify if the letter is legitimate. But if it is legitimate, I come back to asking myself if I even need to react to data breeches anymore, given my credit freezes in place.

I am thinking I will start ignoring these data breeches. Thoughts?

Thanks in advance.