Thursday 11 July 2013

WellPoint fined $1.7 million for exposing health data on Internet


(Reuters) - Health insurer WellPoint Inc will pay $1.7 million for violating privacy laws by allowing health and other personal information from hundreds of thousands of people to be accessed without authorization over the Internet, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Thursday.

A report from HHS indicated that security weaknesses in an online application database exposed information for 612,402 individuals. Data included their names, dates of birth, addresses, Social Security numbers, telephone numbers and health information.

An investigation indicated that WellPoint did not implement appropriate administrative and technical safeguards.

(Reporting By Deena Beasley; editing by Gunna Dickson)

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