WellPoint, Anthem Blue Cross Class Action Settlement

WellPoint and Anthem Blue Cross have reached a class action lawsuit settlement for not protecting customers’ health applications and personal information from public exposure. As a result, anyone who applied for health insurance through WellPoint / Anthem Blue Cross before March 10, 2010 may be able to get receive benefits such as free credit monitoring from the class action settlement.

The WellPoint / Anthem Blue Cross security settlement will resolve a class action lawsuit, known as Blue Cross of California Website Security Cases, that accuses the company of being aware that its customers’ health applications and information were potentially publicly accessible online. The class action lawsuit was filed after it was discovered that the personal information of over 600,000 customers, enrollees and subscribers was stored on some of WellPoint / Anthem Blue Cross’s web-based servers from approximately October 23, 2009 to March 10, 2010 without username, password and encryption protection. This information included Social Security numbers, home and office addresses, telephone numbers, credit card numbers and financial information used for premium payments, personal health information, and other information people may have provided on their health insurance applications to WellPoint / Anthem Blue Cross.

Class Members of the Anthem Blue Cross security class action settlement include everyone in the U.S. whose private information was stored on WellPoint / Anthem Blue Cross’s affected servers from August 15, 2008 through March 10, 2010, or who received a notification letter from WellPoint / Anthem Blue Cross regarding the alleged failure of the company to secure their confidential personal and private information. 

The Anthem Blue Cross class action settlement provides a number of benefits to Class Members, depending on whether you were sent a letter from WellPoint / Anthem Blue Cross and whether or not you accepted their offer of one year of credit monitoring. However, all Class Members are eligible to receive reimbursement for identity theft losses of up to $50,000 for each identity theft incident or reimbursement of certain out-of-pocket expenses such as check printing, credit monitoring, telephone calls and postage, among others. You can find a detailed description of the class action settlement benefits available, depending on your individual situation, at the Settlement Administrator’s website at www.AnthemBlueCrossSecuritySettlement.com. 

To receive free credit monitoring from the WellPoint / Anthem Blue Cross security settlement, you must subscribe to it no later than September 28, 2011. The deadline to submit a claim for reimbursement of identity theft losses or out-of-pocket expenses is 90 days after the Court grants final approval of the settlement, which could be granted as early as November 15, 2011 – the date of the Fairness Hearing.

You can find more details on your rights and benefits from the Well Point / Anthem Blue Cross Security Class Action Lawsuit Settlement, and how to apply for them, in our Open Lawsuit Settlements section.