The National Health Insurance Corp. (NHIC) was found to have provided personal information of about 1.5 million subscribers to a private research institute without any proper steps to stem a possible leak.
The state-run insurance agency handed residence ID numbers and other basic personal information to an unspecified research institute from 2006 to 2007, said Rep. Yoo Il-ho of the governing Grand National Party, citing agency data.
However, given the NHIC did not properly record related data about the presentation of the information to research institutes, the actual people whose personal information was handed over is expected to be larger than the 1.5 million.
The agency has handed residence ID numbers, phone numbers, addresses and other information of insurance subscribers to the research institute dozens of times over the last two years, Yoo said, citing the result of an internal audit.
``If the private institute had leaked the data, the results would have been horrible. The data handled by the National Health Insurance should be kept confidential,’’ Yoo said.
When the agency provides a third party with the personal information, it is required to take preemptive security measures, including codification of data and limitation to the period of the use. However, the agency did not take these basic security steps, the lawmaker said.