Blue Shield of California shared the private health data of millions with Google for years

Health insurance giant Blue Shield of California is notifying millions of people of a data breach. The company confirmed on Wednesday that it had been sharing patients’ private health information with tech and advertising giant Google since 2021. The insurer said that the data sharing stopped in January 2024, but it only learned this February that the years-long collection contained patients’ personal and sensitive health information. Blue Shield said it used Google Analytics to track how its customers used its websites, but a misconfiguration had allowed for personal and health information to be collected as well, such as the search terms that patients used on its website to find healthcare providers. The insurance giant said Google “may have used this data to conduct focused ad campaigns back to those individual members.” Blue Shield said the collected data also included insurance plan names, types and group numbers, along with personal information such as patients’ city, zip cod ... Read full article.