LifeLock

Every day there’s another news story about identity theft or data breaches. It’s enough to make you sick. But, sometimes it’s the other way around – people get sick, and then learn all about data breaches and identity theft…first hand.

Medical data breaches affecting celebrities Britney Spears, Farrah Fawcett and California first lady Marie Shriver were splashed all over the tabloids earlier this year. When the news focuses on famous individuals, the incidents seem singular, rare occurrences, but you may have more in common with the stars than you realize.

So far this year there have been 27 known data breaches in medical care facilities, affecting 4,880,464 patients — and that’s not including five data breaches in which administrators say they have no clue how many patients’ personal or financial information have been compromised.

Among the most notable are the data breaches at University of Miami and University of Utah.

• The UM data loss occurred in April and affected 2.2 million patients. Confidential patient information including names, addresses, Social Security numbers and health information was being transported to an off-site storage location when it was stolen from the company’s van.

• In a similar incident, billing information for 2.2 million patients at University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics was stolen in June from a vehicle during transit to a storage center. Information on 1.3 million patients from 1992 to 2008, including Social Security numbers was included in the stolen records.

Just this week, Blue Cross and Blue Shield officials in Atlanta announced that they mistakenly sent more than 200,000 benefit letters which contained extensive personal information to the wrong addresses. Patient names, ID numbers, medical providers names, and the amounts billed and owed were exposed. Some of the letters also included the insureds’ Social Security numbers.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 9:32 am and is filed under Data breach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.