Recent Breach of Note - UW Medicine

Recently, the news website hackers.tech reported that UW patient data was exposed online. This is not a run of the mill data leak. In this case, the information related to 974,000 patients was posted to Google nonetheless. The information that leaked included The files contained: Name, Medical record number, With whom UW Medicine shared your information. A description of what information about you was shared (For example, demographics , office visits or labs ). The reason for the disclosure, such as mandatory reporting or screening to see if you qualified for a research study. That ’s a lot of freaking info!

How was it discovered? Check it out! Megan Flory says that she accessed some of the UW Medicine files through a Google search last month after a friend discovered the exposed personal information when looking up a person ’s name she ’d met. Upset about something she ’d stumbled across online, said Flory. It clearly said it was UW Medicine. Flory said there were as many as 120 names in the UW Medicine files she accessed through a Google search that also included the names of those patient ’s lab tests but not the results. HIV was one of them! That was what they all were, pretty much, said Flory. If you don ’t know what it means, it ’s maybe easier to kind of assume it ’s the worst. Flory said she then spoke with a woman at UW Medicine to report what she ’d found online. Having things out on Google like that is scary, said Flory. You know it could be upsetting or devastating for somebody.

So there you have it, trust your data to your friendly medical school and find it using a Google search.