You may fiercely protect your personal information...but "others" don't?

HealthNow data goes missing as laptop vanishes... members may be at risk

HealthNow New York has alerted 40,000 members in Western and Northeastern New York that they may be at risk for identity theft, after a former employee's laptop computer went missing with confidential information several months ago.

The Buffalo-based parent of Blue-Cross BlueShield of Western New York sent letters late last week to the affected customers, even though officials are still not certain what, if anything, was on the computer.

Based on the company's investigation, the potential information includes names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, addresses, employer group names, and health insurance identifier numbers. However, there was no health or medical claims information involved, spokeswoman Karen Merkel-Liberatore said late Monday.

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Prior Blog: Horizon Blue Cross/Blue Shield is warning more than 300,000 members that some of their personal information was on a laptop computer that was stolen.

The Laptop contained names, Social Security numbers and other personal information for about 10 percent of the insurer's 3.3 million customers in New Jersey.

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Hospital donor files compromised...
Data breach at Cascade Healthcare may affect more than 11,500 people

A computer virus may have exposed to outside eyes the names, credit card numbers, dates of birth and home addresses of more than 11,500 individuals who donated to Cascade Healthcare Community, the parent company of St. Charles in Bend and Redmond.

The virus penetrated the computer system Dec. 11, and the hospital's information technology staff believed they had rebuffed it. But Feb. 5, they detected suspicious activity in the system and called in computer forensic experts to investigate.

By Feb. 20, it became clear the information had been made vulnerable by the virus.

On Wednesday, the hospital announced the data may have been exposed. The data breach is a concern due to the potential for identity theft. More

Consumers continue to be at "genuine" risk of fraud and identity theft when our personal identifying information is lost, stolen or pilfered from hacked databases on a daily basis.
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