Blue Shield of California's decision to use a third-party tracker - Google Analytics - on its sites has led to what the health insurance company calls a potential data breach that may have resulted in protected health information getting shared with Google Ads.
The notice about the breach was issued on April 9, while the discovery about a Google Analytics configuration that allowed for Google Ad's access to sensitive data was made on February 11 of this year.
However, the time period while the configuration was in place spanned almost three years - from April 2021 until January 2024, when the connection between the two Google services was "severed" on Blue Shield's sites.
The data Blue Shield says was "likely" used by Google for its targeted advertising of those affected potentially included insurance plan details, patient name, their fiscal responsibility, family size, gender, city, ZIP code, insurer-assigned identifiers for medical claim service data and service provider, "Find a Doctor" search criteria (location, plan name and type, provider name and type).
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