Personal information stolen from plastic surgery clinics by hackers
Clients of a London plastic surgery clinic are looking at taking legal action against it after hackers stole personal information.
Legal firm Simpson Millar said 38 people have enquired about making claims against Transform Hospital Group, whose London branches are based in Fulham and Marylebone.
Transform has previously been endorsed by household names including Kerry Katona and Joey Essex, according to BBC News, but there is no evidence they were affected by the data breach.
The Sun reported that a group of hackers known as REvil, said to be based in Russia, were behind the hack.
Lawyers for the patients, six of whom are from London, say confidential information including medical records, email addresses and dates of birth were stolen during the breach in December 2020.
Simpson Millar also said some patients are “living in fear that before and after pictures have also been stolen” from Transform, which has 11 private clinics in the UK.
Pamila Muzaffar, a professional negligence solicitor from the firm, said: “From our experience with these types of cases, the true extent of damage caused by the breach will not be apparent for several months.
“Many patients will be extremely anxious about just what information has been stolen, and how it might be used in the future.”
A spokesperson for Transform said: “We immediately notified the relevant regulators and authorities, including the National Cyber Security Centre, Information Commissioner’s Office and the police, and began a thorough investigation of the incident.
“All patients were contacted to inform them of the incident and to confirm that no card payment details were accessed.
“There is no indication that the vast majority of our patients’ details have been accessed.
“Any patient images are stored anonymously and contain a unique identification number that sits separately to their written patient records.
“All photographs are localised to the area of any given procedure and do not include facial images unless used for facial surgery.”
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