MANILA - Around 13 to 20 million members’ names and information have been leaked online following the recent cyberattack on the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation, the state medical insurer confirmed on Wednesday.

PhilHealth’s data privacy officer Nerissa Santiago said most of the members affected are ‘indirect contributors’ such as senior citizens and indigents.

The information came from the billing documents of PhilHealth to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) which showed the members’ names, PhilHealth identification number (PIN), the date of birth, the addresses, among others.

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“For the members po, if we are looking at the individual work station, we are expecting about 13-20 million names po, but iyon hindi pa po namin masabi ng exact number but initially that is what we are looking at po,” Santiago said.

“If we will be looking at the employees, list of employees sa work office nasa 600-800 po siya within the home office. Sa ngayon wala pa talaga kamng exact number as we are still analyzing the data that we have obtained,” she added.

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PhilHealth has also begun notifying its concerned employees.

Atty. Eli Dino Santos, PhilHealth’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, said that the National Privacy Commission has also set up a portal in its website where members can check if their personal information had been included in the leaked data.

PhilHealth is also in the process of developing a separate portal to address specific concerns regarding the hacking incident.

The corporation is also considering other options to notify the concerned members.

“Isa, would be notification through text, if the cell number is available in our database. Another would be through email notification and the last resort would be the most difficult one, which is individually mailing through registered mail or visiting the person themselves,” Santiago also added.

PhilHealth is also studying the possibility of changing the PIN of affected members so it won’t be used by criminals for any illegal activity.

“We have conducted several meetings to address this possibility of changing the PIN or the Philhealth identification number. So we listened to the advantages and disadvantages. It is just a matter of when, we are considering changing the PIN for us to protect the identification or information of our members,” Santos explained.