RICHMOND, Va. -- It is perhaps one of the largest breaches of its kind --- health insurance giant Anthem was hacked, leaving customers' names, addresses, income information, birthdays and social security numbers exposed.
"I think it is outrageous, I always thought Anthem had my back," Lamson, a longtime customer, said.
Tens of millions of Americans are believed to be affected. In the metro-Richmond area that includes over 150,000 current and former states employees, as well as teachers and administrators in Henrico and Chesterfield public schools.
"This is a bad one," the Better Business Bureau's Tom Gallagher said. "It's worse than the ones that have happened over the last couple years."
Anthem declined CBS 6's request for an interview but called the attack "sophisticated" in an email.
Anthem officials are directing customers to anthemfacts.comto learn more about the breach.
Gallagher encouraged customers to take advantage of Anthem's offer to provide credit monitoring programs to impacted clients. He says customers should use the programs for months or even years since customers don't know when hackers will use the data.
"They could hold on to this data forever," Gallagher said.
Anthem is the process of notifying customers whose information was exposed. Officials do not believe credit card information or medical history information was exposed .
Gina Ivey with Henrico Federal Credit Union said financial institutions are bracing for customer inquiries, but says several large-scale hacking schemes over the years have made opening new lines of credit a more difficult process.
"When a person comes in, they have to verify they are that person with different forms of ID," Ivey said.
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