Quest Diagnostics says nearly 12 million people may have had personal, financial, and medical data leaked

Blood test samples.
(Image credit: iStock/Bet_Noire)

Around 11.9 million Quest Diagnostics patients may have had serious personal information leaked due to an issue with a payment system the company contracts with.

Quest's billing collections vendor, American Medical Collection Agency, informed the company on May 14 about a system breach, Quest said in a Monday filing. AMCA didn't have access to patients' lab results, but social security, credit card, and bank account numbers could have been leaked, The Wall Street Journal reports.

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Quest has since "suspended collection requests from AMCA and notified affected health plans," the Journal writes. It is working with law enforcement and security experts to evaluate just who and what was affected.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.