Flaw in Walgreens App Exposes Prescription Data for Some Mobile Users

The pharmacy would not say how many people had been affected by the error, but said that prescription data and customers’ names were part of the leaked information.

• By Haley Samsel
• Mar 04, 2020

A cybersecurity flaw in the Walgreens mobile app may have exposed the prescription data of customers and other personal information, the company announced this week.

The error was found in the app’s messaging feature, which allows Walgreens users to track their prescriptions. Between Jan. 9 and Jan, 15, the flaw left personal information like customers’ names, prescription numbers, drug names and some shipping addresses exposed to other customers, CyberScoop reported.

Walgreens would not say how many people were affected by the breach in total, with Rina Shah, vice president of pharmacy operations, stating that only a “small percentage” of customers had their data exposed. The issue was discovered on Jan. 15, after which Walgreens disabled the messaging capability before fixing the app, Shah said.

Customers have been notified if their data was included in the breach, and are instructed to monitor their prescriptions and medical records for any suspicious activity.

“Once we learned of the incident, Walgreens promptly took steps to temporarily disable message viewing to prevent further disclosure and then implemented a technical correction that resolved the issue,” Shah wrote in a letter to affected customers.

“Walgreens will conduct additional testing as appropriate for future changes to verify the change will not impact the privacy of customer data,” Shah added.

No financial data was included as part of the breach. The full letter, which is published to the California attorney general’s website as part of a legal requirement, can be found here.