Blue Shield Insurance Company Acknowledges Data Breach

Blue Shield Insurance Company Acknowledges Data Breach. According to Blue Shield of California Insurance agents’ Social Security numbers were mistakenly exposed. The company recently began notifying an undisclosed number of insurance agents that their Social Security numbers were mistakenly made available online.
BSC writes that the problem with SSN exposure existed between December 20, 2013 and January 16, 2014, but that the SSN were not presented in a format that would make the number immediately recognizable as a Social Security number.

Blue Shield chief privacy official Hope H. Scott wrote:

“Upon receiving this report, Blue Shield took immediate steps to remove the display of the Agent ID numbers from the Web site, which was fully completed by January 16, 2014,” . “In order to ensure that this issue does not recur, we are also taking steps to improve our procedures for verifying the information that may be displayed on our Web site.”