Bad News, Good News

A company named Conduent has been sending out letters warning of a data breach that apparently affected some participants in UC health plans. Conduent appears to do clerical work for health plans. The letter does not say which health plan is involved. It does say information such as Social Security number was stolen.

The letter is dated Dec. 31, 2025 and refers to a data breach a year before that. But the letter arrived last week. The first page of a 3-page letter is shown here. The other pages contain boilerplate language about credit rating agencies, freezing your credit, etc.

The good news, such as it is, is that UC folks already had their data stolen some time back and UC provides free data monitoring. So if you got the letter, it is unlikely that anything new was stolen.

Californians can freeze their credit at the three credit agencies for free. It's a good idea to do it. But it does involve some hassle if you want to do something involving finances such as apply for a new credit card. You have to unfreeze access for a temporary period in such cases.

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A letter dated Jan. 26, 2026 was circulated within UCOP indicating which plans were affected. As far as yours truly knows, no information was sent by UC directly to plan participants. Below is the list of plans as of a month ago:

• Anthem – Elevance Health: Over 83,000 UC PPO members were affected. Notifications were or will be sent in three separate waves based on the business functions performed by Conduent. Some members may receive multiple notifications.
• Accolade: No member impact, as this vendor is not used.
• Navitus: No member impact, as this vendor is not used.
• Kaiser Permanente: 18 members affected.
• Optum Behavioral Health: Confirmation pending.
• Health Net: 633 UC Blue & Gold HMO members and 50 Postdoctoral members affected.
• UnitedHealthcare: No member impact, as this vendor is not used.