Healthcare insurer Blue Protect of California has notified 4.7 million people of a possible information breach after unknowingly sharing sufferers’ protected well being info with Google since 2021.
“On February 11, 2025, Blue Protect found that, between April 2021 and January 2024, Google Analytics was configured in a method that allowed sure member information to be shared with Google’s promoting product, Google Advertisements, that seemingly included protected well being info,” Blue Protect mentioned in its discover.
“Google could have used this information to conduct centered advert campaigns again to these particular person members. We need to reassure our members that no dangerous actor was concerned, and, to our data, Google has not used the data for any goal aside from these advertisements or shared the protected info with anybody.”
Blue Protect used Google Analytics to trace members’ use of sure Blue Protect web sites. It mentioned it “severed the connection” to Google Advertisements and Google Analytics in January 2024, a yr earlier than it realized of the years-long information assortment.
The well being insurer mentioned the data that will have been impacted contains one’s insurance coverage plan identify, sort and group quantity, in addition to private particulars like affected person identify, gender, location, household measurement and affected person monetary accountability.
Blue Protect-generated distinctive IDs for members’ on-line accounts, info associated to medical declare service dates and suppliers, and search inputs and outcomes from the “Discover a Physician” function had been additionally shared.
The well being insurer mentioned Social Safety numbers, driver’s license numbers, and banking or bank card info weren’t disclosed.
Blue Protect filed a legally required disclosure with the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers on April 9, stating that 4.7 million people had been affected by the breach. As of final yr, the corporate reported having 4.8 million members.
THE LARGER TREND
Verizon launched its 2025 Information Breach Investigations Report this week, which revealed that healthcare stays a favourite goal of attackers.
One other firm that skilled an information breach is multinational laptop know-how firm Oracle, which has skilled two separate information breaches in latest months, one affecting Oracle Well being clients and one other mentioned to have resulted from an exploit focusing on Oracle Cloud login servers.
Final month, Yale New Haven reported a cybersecurity incident wherein risk actors stole private information of 5.5 million sufferers. The cyberattack precipitated IT system disruptions however didn’t have an effect on affected person care.
In 2024, Change Healthcare, a software program and information analytics vendor that provides income cycle administration, medical determination assist and different operations instruments, introduced it took its programs offline because of a cyberattack.
The corporate, which handles claims for lots of of 1000’s of physicians, pharmacies and different suppliers and processes numbering round 15 billion transactions yearly, was struck by BlackCat ransomware, leaving its operations basically debilitated.
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