The Kaiser Permanente system tells millions of its users about a privacy breach that may have affected about 13.4 million current and past Kaiser Permanente members and patients.
The healthcare provider is telling both current and former customers about the problem. The health group claimed not to know of any breach of member or patient privacy.
Code on Kaiser’s website and mobile apps may have taken information like members’ names, IP addresses, and how they used the site or app.
According to ABC7, this is more of a privacy breach than a data breach. This is when thieves break into a system to steal and sell personal information.
“If there was a privacy breach, which this seems to be, it happened because Kaiser shared personal information with other companies, in this case, Twitter/X, but it could have been Google or Microsoft as well,” said Dr. Clifford Neuman, Director of the USC Center for Computer Systems Security.
The following is what Kaiser Permanente said in a statement to Eyewitness News:
“These third parties did not receive any usernames, passwords, Social Security numbers, financial account information, or credit card numbers.” The Kaiser Permanente organization looked into the use of these online technologies on its own, and afterward, took them down from its websites and mobile apps.
The group apologized to its members and told them that they have put in place protection and other steps to help make sure this doesn’t happen again.