Change Healthcare is a health technology company owned by UnitedHealth. More than 100 million people lost sensitive health information. In a ransomware attack last year, the company said on Tuesday that it had “substantially” completed notifying affected individuals about the massive data breach.
In February 2024, a ransomware attack on Change Healthcare, one of the largest processors of patient billing in the United States, caused a months-long outage that disrupted care throughout the US healthcare system. There are also data leaks. The largest medical data breach in US history. Change Healthcare gave the hackers a refund on purpose. No further publication is prohibited. A copy of the stolen data was obtained in order to initiate the exchange of stolen data.
In the Burmese update, Data breach notice on its website on Tuesday, Change Healthcare said its “affected customers have been notified” of the company's mailing address. The health care giant said it “may not have enough addresses for all those potentially affected,” and the website's warning is to “provide consumers and individuals with information about criminal cyberattacks.”
But if you search the web for Change Healthcare data breach notices; You cannot find the web page in search engine results.
TechCrunch's review of the web page source code of the breach notice revealed that Change Healthcare contained hidden “noindex” code in the notice; It tells search engines to ignore the web page; It makes it harder for anyone searching the web for notifications to find them. the results. Change Healthcare has included the code “noindex” in its data breach notice. At least November 20 2024.
It is unclear why Change Healthcare has hidden the page from search engines. UnitedHealth spokesman Tyler Mason would not comment on why Change Healthcare added the code to cover the data breach notice. When asked, A spokesperson could not provide an exact number of Change Healthcare notified of the breach beyond the estimated 100 million shared by October 2024 with the US government's Department of Health.
A spokesman for the Office of Health and Human Rights, which oversees data breaches related to federal investigations involving protected health information, did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.
Change Healthcare has been criticized for being slow to notify victims of the breach — four months after the company received a copy of the stolen files. The delay in public disclosure has prompted several states, including the United States. California, Massachusetts, Nebraska versus New HampshireIn the wake of a data breach, identity theft and fraud intervention is provided to stay alert.
December 2024 Nebraska has taken legal action against Change Healthcare. For many security flaws that lead to breaches. The state's attorney general, Mike Hilgers, said that Change Healthcare's failure to provide adequate notice to affected individuals meant that the state's citizens had “sensitive personal finances; It may be more vulnerable to the use of health and identifying information,” he said.