Healthcare insurer Blue Defend of California has notified 4.7 million people of a possible knowledge breach after unknowingly sharing sufferers’ protected well being data with Google since 2021.
“On February 11, 2025, Blue Defend found that, between April 2021 and January 2024, Google Analytics was configured in a means that allowed sure member knowledge to be shared with Google’s promoting product, Google Advertisements, that seemingly included protected well being data,” Blue Defend mentioned in its discover.
“Google might have used this knowledge to conduct centered advert campaigns again to these particular person members. We wish 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 data with anybody.”
Blue Defend used Google Analytics to trace members’ use of sure Blue Defend web sites. It mentioned it “severed the connection” to Google Advertisements and Google Analytics in January 2024, a 12 months earlier than it realized of the years-long knowledge assortment.
The well being insurer mentioned the data which will have been impacted consists of one’s insurance coverage plan identify, kind and group quantity, in addition to private particulars like affected person identify, gender, location, household dimension and affected person monetary duty.
Blue Defend-generated distinctive IDs for members’ on-line accounts, data 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 data weren’t disclosed.
Blue Defend filed a legally required disclosure with the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Companies on April 9, stating that 4.7 million people had been affected by the breach. As of final 12 months, 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 expertise firm Oracle, which has skilled two separate knowledge breaches in latest months, one affecting Oracle Well being prospects 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 by which risk actors stole private knowledge of 5.5 million sufferers. The cyberattack triggered IT system disruptions however didn’t have an effect on affected person care.
In 2024, Change Healthcare, a software program and knowledge analytics vendor that gives income cycle administration, medical choice help and different operations instruments, introduced it took its programs offline as a result of a cyberattack.
The corporate, which handles claims for a whole lot of hundreds 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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