US insurance company Globe Life is investigating a data breach involving unauthorized access to consumer and policyholder information. 

The post Insurance Company Globe Life Investigating Data Breach appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Globe Life Breach Discovery and Containment

Incident Comes After Scrutiny Over Business Tactics

Funding for policing comes amid soaring insurance costs after Range Rovers hit by wave of crime

Jaguar Land Rover is planning to invest more than £1m to support UK police to fight car thefts and fund intelligence gathering.

The luxury carmaker said the money would be used to target theft hotspots and provide police forces “with additional dedicated resources to respond to vehicle thefts across the country”.

A cat will set you back thousands over its lifetime, but good insurance and buying secondhand can help you save

The cost of owning a cat varies depending on the breed you get. It will set you back at least £11,100 to care for the average cat over its lifetime, according to pet charity People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA). This includes the cost of insurance but doesn’t include additional vet bills for illness or injury.

Every year its renewal goes up by about 20%, then we negotiate. But this year it is playing hardball

I have been a customer with Axa home insurance for nearly 10 years and have never made a claim. Every year, when the policy comes up for renewal, Axa plays a game with me: it sends a renewal invitation with a substantially increased price of about 20%. I then call in and we agree a sensible price in line with inflation. This year, however, it seems to want to play hard ball: the renewal quote is a staggering 70% higher, and, when I called, it said the best offer would be an increase of 53%.

It argues this is to do with inflation (though according to the ONS sectors with the highest rates of inflation, apart from alcohol and tobacco, didn’t show more than 6%). I don’t want to spend time shopping around every year. I just want hassle-free insurance at a reasonable price. I have raised a complaint with Axa, but its turnaround is 30 days, after the policy renews.
CB, London

Health insurance giant Kaiser has announced it will notify millions of patients about a data breach after sharing patients’ data with advertisers.

Kaiser said that an investigation led to the discovery that “certain online technologies, previously installed on its websites and mobile applications, may have transmitted personal information to third-party vendors.”

In the required notice with the US government, Kaiser lists 13.4 million affected individuals. Among these third-party ad vendors are Google, Microsoft, and X. Kaiser said it subsequently removed the tracking code from its websites and mobile apps.

A tracking pixel is a piece of code that website owners can place on their website. The pixel collects data that helps businesses track people and target adverts at them. That’s nice for the advertisers, but the information gathered by these pixels tells them a lot about your browsing behavior, and a lot about you.

This kind of data leak normally happens when a website includes sensitive information in its URLs (web addresses). The URLs you visit are shared with the company that provides the tracking pixel, so if the URL contains sensitive information it will end up in the hands of the tracking company. The good news is that while it’s easy for websites to leak information like this, there is no suggestion that tracking pixel operators are aware of it, or acting on it, and it would probably be hugely impractical for them to do so.

The leaked data includes member names and IP addresses, as well as information that could indicate if members were signed into a Kaiser Permanente account or service, how they interacted with it, how they navigated through the website and mobile applications, and what search terms they used in the health encyclopedia.

A spokesperson said that Kaiser intends to begin notifying the affected current and former members and patients who accessed its websites and mobile apps in May.

Not so long ago, we reported how mental health company Cerebral failed to protect sensitive personal data, and ended up having to pay $7 million. Also due to tracking pixels, so this is a recurring problem we are likely to see lots more of. Research done by TheMarkup in June of 2022 showed that Meta’s pixel could be found on the websites of 33 of the top 100 hospitals in America.

Check your digital footprint

Malwarebytes has a new free tool for you to check how much of your personal data has been exposed online. Submit your email address (it’s best to give the one you most frequently use) to our free Digital Footprint scan and we’ll give you a report and recommendations.

Kashmir Hill has a really good article on how GM tricked its drivers into letting it spy on them—and then sold that data to insurance companies.

Kasmir Hill has the story:

Modern cars are internet-enabled, allowing access to services like navigation, roadside assistance and car apps that drivers can connect to their vehicles to locate them or unlock them remotely. In recent years, automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia and Hyundai, have started offering optional features in their connected-car apps that rate people’s driving. Some drivers may not realize that, if they turn on these features, the car companies then give information about how they drive to data brokers like LexisNexis [who then sell it to insurance companies].

Automakers and data brokers that have partnered to collect detailed driving data from millions of Americans say they have drivers’ permission to do so. But the existence of these partnerships is nearly invisible to drivers, whose consent is obtained in fine print and murky privacy policies that few read.