business
Highmark members' personal data lost in the mail
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted March 1, 2010
Identifying information for about 3,700 members of Pittsburgh-based Highmark was lost when an envelope containing billing information was damaged in the mail.
The health plan notified the members in February that the billing statement mailed from Highmark to its customer, Boscov's Dept. Store, in January arrived with pages missing, and those pages included members' Social Security numbers.
All of the affected members are employees or retirees of Boscov's.
The company will pay for credit monitoring for those members for a year. "There is no reason to believe this information was stolen," a corporate statement said. "In light of this situation, we are examining our mail processes to determine whether we can change anything to help prevent this type of incident from occurring again."
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2010/03/01/bibf0301.htm.
