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Health insurance hack hit up to 19M non-Anthem customers

The health insurance company said that millions of people who weren't enrolled in its services were affected by a hack earlier this year.
Written by Zack Whittaker, Contributor
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(Image: Anthem/BlueCross)

A cyberattack on health insurance firm Anthem earlier this year impacted between 8.8 million and 18.8 million customers enrolled on non-Anthem plans.

The second-largest provider of health insurance in the US said Tuesday a total of 78.8 million people may have been ensnared by an earlier database breach, according to a Reuters report.

Up to 70 million of those are enrolled in an Anthem insurance plan, but the remaining figure are on plans offered independently. Millions of customers in the 14 states where Anthem operates may still have had details stolen from a hacked database.

Earlier this year, Anthem confirmed it had suffered a cyberattack, leading to the theft of tens of millions of records. Hackers were said to have stolen a single password, allowing them to break into a database of unencrypted personal information of millions of current and former customers and employees.

The cyberattack led to the theft of names, dates-of-birth, Social Security numbers, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers.

Adding to the company's woes, it was accused of failing to inform customers of the breach, which led to an investigation by a number of attorneys general from various US states.

The cost of the hack is likely set to cross the $100 million mark, according to reports.

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