Iowa Workforce Development is warning Iowans to keep watch over their unemployment insurance user accounts as Iowans are reporting an increase in fraudulent activity, IWD said in a statement Monday. The announcement comes as some Iowans report being locked out of their IWD accounts and blocked from receiving their unemployment benefits for up to three weeks, as reported by KCCI. In its statement, IWD said it has not experienced any data breaches. It said users’ personal information may be acquired through phishing scams and large-scale private sector breaches. The statement also noted that cyber actors are using “highly sophisticated algorithms and programs to attack states’ unemployment systems.” As of February, more than a half-dozen states’ unemployment systems had been affected by cyber fraud schemes and more than $36 billion in unemployment payments nationally has been stolen, Pew Charitable Trust reported.
