The US health insurer Centene has admitted that it’s performing an “ongoing comprehensive internal search” for six hard drives. Sadly, those hard drives contain personal details about 1 million of its customers. Oops.
Centene, based in St Louis, says that the hard drives in question contain personal data about people who received laboratory services between 2009 and 2015. Stored on the drives are details including names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers, member ID numbers and health information.
One small scrap of good news: the data doesn’t contain any payment or credit card details. And Michael F. Neidorff, the President and CEO of Centene, claims that his company doesn’t believe the information has been used “inappropriately.”
While the company doesn’t know where the drives are, it does know how they went missing. “The drives were a part of a data project using laboratory results to improve the health outcomes of our members,” points out Neidorff.
Affected customers will receive free credit and healthcare monitoring. So, that’s something, we guess.
[Centene]
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