SAN DIEGO (NEWS 8) - The private information of millions of patients in California may have been put at risk after a major insurer that offers coverage through Covered California reported a potentially serious data breach.
The data of nearly five million Molina Healthcare customers was open for other customers to see.
Cyber security experts said the popular Covered California insurer was using an outdated customer portal for years.
"This is not something that all of a sudden cropped up. It's been there all along. The question is how long have people noticed it and they'll have no way of knowing unless they can go back through logs and check if people are accessing multiple records," said Murray Jennex with San Diego State University.
Molina Healthcare customers were able to log into their account, then by making a slight adjustment to the URL, they could access other patients' data - including name, address, diagnosis and medication.
"They may never really figure out how many records got compromised, the safe bet is to assume they all are," said Jennex.
Molina Healthcare declined an on-camera interview, but in a statement to News 8 said:
"We are in the process of conducting an internal investigation to determine the impact, if any, to our customers' information and will provide any applicable notifications to customers and/or regulatory authorities. Protecting our members' information is of utmost importance to Molina."
The healthcare company told customers the online system is just temporarily unavailable.
Some experts said they may not have much to worry about. "You'd think if someone was using this data by now, we'd know and they didn't. I suspect not that many records have been found," said Jennex.
Concerned customers can contact Molina Healthcare at the number on the back of their insurance card. There is no timeline when the patient portal will be securely up and running again.
Full Statement by Molina Healthcare:
