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US Health Insurer Anthem Suffers Massive Data Breach
An anonymous reader writes Anthem, the second-largest health insurer in the United States, has suffered a data breach that may turn out to be the largest health care breach to date, as the compromised database holds records of some 80 million individuals. Not much is known about how the attack was discovered, how it unfolded and who might be behind it, but the breach has been confirmed by the company's CEO Joseph Swedish in a public statement, in which he says they were the victims of a "very sophisticated external cyber attack." The company has notified the FBI, and has hired Mandiant to evaluate their systems and identify solutions to secure them.
Swedish said the breach is extensive: the vulnerable data included "names, birthdays, medical IDs/social security numbers, street addresses, email addresses and employment information, including income data," though "no credit card or medical information, such as claims, test results or diagnostic codes were targeted or compromised." (Also covered by Reuters.)
Huge databases full of personal info are gigantic targets, and properly securing them is very very difficult (and what's worse, uneconomical, since most of them are owned by publicly traded companies)..
Pandora's box is open now, but don't say the tinfoiled warriors didn't warn you..
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
The hell you say! I'm sure all that money they saved not building an adequate infrastructure is much more than this breach will cost them. Oh, wait...
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
So of the roughly 300 million people with SSNs, nearly a third of them are nearly compromised? Great.
Always stuck me as silly that your SSN was supposed to be secret and is used as a password. But you can never change it and you have to give to everyone including companies like this that lose it. Seems like the SSA should also give you a password that you can update that places could authenticate against. That way if you suspect a breach and you could update that number. Something like they you come in verify your identity and give you a new PIN.
My congresscritter has managed to vote to repeal ACA 50+ times since it was passed. Got any ideas on how to make him stop? Letter writing didn't help. Voting against him didn't help either.
Its nice that they notified us today that our information was breached, but the real question is why they didn't notify us sooner.
They setup a specific website about this breach.
http://anthemfacts.com/
The problem to me is that they just now notified us, yet they registered the domain for the breach on 2014-12-13. Which goes to show that they knew about the breach nearly 2 months (or possibly more) before deciding to inform us.
Why is a healthcare insurance provider collecting income information on the people they insure?
I've worked in employee benefits for over 25 years, and the usual reason is that they are administering more than your health insurance. Often you also have short-term and/or long-term disability insurance, or life insurance. The benefits of these are based on some percentage of your salary. Your short term disability benefit may be 60% of your salary, or your life insurance benefit may be 2 X salary.
In all my time working for insurers like Anthem I have never been asked to pull salary data for anything not related to the above.
Yes, the behavior is totally defensible because the other side does it as well.
This coming from the person that (a) was the one that brought up gerrymandering, (b) only mentioned the GOP, and (c) vilified the GOP.
A very consistent thinking process you have. You will slam them publicly when the GOP does it, but you will also make every attempt to avoid saying that the DNC is also doing it.
When confronted with your hypocrisy you shrug it off and again make sure to not directly say that the DNC is also guilty but instead say "the other side."
Intellectual honesty is only intact when its from start to finish. When it isnt from start to finish, you are just a partisan asshole.
"His name was James Damore."
Its selfish to not want to be told by someone else what to do?
It's called civilization. If I want to masturbate in public, or kill people, or be a pedophile, or be a cannibal. Or steal from my neighbors and sell their stuff on ebay, or force my neighbor's wife to have sex with me. I'm not allowed to do those things, It's an infringement upon my freedoms. I am not free to do any of those things without societal repercussions. And I agree with punishments for those things. People should not have the freedom to do those things.
We are a whole lot less "free" than some of us think.
It is the people that think they have an automatic right to tell others what to do that are selfish. This seems to be a common theme in politics today, where a group guilty of something like being selfish, label those that oppose them with what they themselves are actually guilty of.
Read this
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/l...
Now let's discuss.
Okay, I am certain that washing hands after using the toilet is one of those selfish things that intrude upon freedom. It actually is a restriction. If I have to do something, I am not free from doing exactly as I wish. I am restricted from my freedom to get my coliform bacteria laden shit on people's food. And senator Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) agrees with that.
Do you? Is fundamental freeddom do whatever you feel like doing so sacrosanct that you would be willing to allow your child to die with their internal organs destroyed be a massive e coli infection just so someone doesn't have to wash their hands? Even if we're not in "Think of the Children mode", are you willing to die because an employee enjoys greater freedom to
He is fine with that. And his other bit of batshit crazy supidity was that he supported restaraunts having to put up a sign saying they didn't require employees to wash their hand after a steaming hot crap. if they don't want to require their employees to have to wash their hands.
Which of course is a regulation, and regulations are bad, and it infringes upon the freedoms of the owner of the restaurant. I is the final answer "Eat Shit and die, it's the way of freedom"?
This is the problem when Libertarianism gets married to Fundamentalist Republicanism. We end up making insane statements. Probably very few people want to eat fecal matter. It's been a known disease vector for a long long time. But when you decide that every law and regulation is an assault upon your freedom, and therefore evil, you get stuck in a potatofest of having to support insane ideas like a complete abandonment of basic hygiene, with Two Girls, One Cup notwithstanding.
It is not selfish to want to avoid other peoples tyranny. You dumb fuck.
Meh, Define that tyranny? Is it being required to wash your hands? Is it not allowing you to kill anyone you feel like killing? Not being allowed to have sex with your daughter? All are societal restrictions on your freedom. You would be much more free if you could do any of those things, without society judging or impeding you.
This is where all of the faux libertarian arguments fail. Everything a litmus test, and when hoist by your own petard, you end up having to make up things like requiring employers to put up sighns that only violate your own litmus tests. There is no civilization without restrictions on behavior. The faux libertarian world is nothing more than modern day crypto-anarchy.
And you calling me a "dumb fuck" is just illustrative of every conversation I have with faux libertarians. All insult, no content.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.