Blue Shield of California Data Breach Impacts 4.7 Million People

Health insurer Blue Shield of California is notifying roughly 4.7 million people that their protected health information (PHI) was exposed to Google for years.

The data breach, the organization says, was the result of a website misconfiguration that resulted in members’ data being shared with the Google Ads advertising service.

Blue Shield of California has been using Google Analytics to internally track website usage on certain sites, “to improve the services” offered to members, the company says.

“On February 11, 2025, Blue Shield discovered that, between April 2021 and January 2024, Google Analytics was configured in a way that allowed certain member data to be shared with Google’s advertising product, Google Ads, that likely included protected health information,” the health insurer announced earlier this month.

Blue Shield of California says that the connection between Google Analytics and Google Ads on its website was severed in January 2024, thus ...