BOSTON — Maine is among 10 U.S. states that have sent a letter to Anthem Inc. complaining that the company has been too slow in notifying consumers that they were victims of a massive data breach disclosed last week.
“The delay in notifying those impacted is unreasonable and is causing unnecessary added worry to an already concerned population of Anthem customers,” said the letter, which was sent Tuesday by Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen on behalf of Connecticut and nine other states.
The letter asked the No. 2 U.S. health insurer to compensate any consumers who are victims of scams, if the fraud occurs before Anthem notifies them of the breach and offers them free credit monitoring.
“Anthem must commit to reimbursing consumers for any losses associated with this breach during the time period between the breach and the date that the company provides access to credit and identity theft safeguards,” said the letter.
Jepsen also asked Anthem to contact his office by Wednesday afternoon with details of its plans to “provide adequate protections” to consumers whose data was exposed in this breach.
The letter was written on behalf of Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
In a statement Wednesday, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Maine said it was committed to notifying consumers affected by the cyberattack in a timely manner.
“Since the attack was discovered, we have been working with a vendor that is quickly making the necessary preparations to provide credit monitoring and identity theft protection services to the millions of people potentially affected by this attack,” the statement said. “We have laid out a thoughtful plan with this vendor so that they can accommodate what we anticipate will be very high demand for these services. Our goal is to provide peace of mind to consumers, while minimizing frustration.”
Consumers can sign up for the services, which will be offered at no cost for two years, beginning Friday, according to the statement. Information on how to enroll will be posted at anthemfacts.com.
Anthem disclosed the massive breach last week, saying that hackers accessed a database of some 80 million consumers and employees that contained Social Security numbers and other sensitive data.
On Friday the company warned U.S. customers about an email scam targeting former and current members.