I called American Income Life Insurance to alert them to a data breach involving 150,000 customers. Here’s why they didn’t find out.

American Income Life Insurance (AILife), based in Waco, Texas, is cited as having a data leak affecting 150,000 customers, former customers, or applicants, with a table that includes names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, dates of birth, policy details and other policy information. The data’s effective dates span from 2013 to the end of March 2023, and the dataset was leaked to the internet where it is freely downloadable.

The author reports that the Federal Trade Commission emphasises the importance of having a mechanism to receive data security alerts, and notes that AILife’s homepage did not provide such information, prompting a call to their 800-number. The piece criticises the process as a security failure, recounting a multi-step phone path to reach an unknown contact rather than a direct transfer to IT or security, and asks readers to consider calling to confirm inclusion in the dump.

According to the SEC filing, Globe Life disclosed a breach affecting about 5,000 AILife customers in October 2024, with a later note that approximately 850,000 additional individuals’ data stored in related databases were being notified; Security Week followed with coverage of these developments, and the report notes no evidence that the breach involved ransomware or disrupted operations.