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Facebook may have violated patient privacy laws:
Meta may have scooped up sensitive medical information without consent. The Verge reports that two proposed class-action lawsuits accuse the company and hospitals of violating HIPAA, the California Invasion of Privacy Act and other laws by collecting patient data without consent. Meta's Pixel analytic tracking tool allegedly sent health statuses, appointment details and other data to Facebook when it was present on patient portals.
In one lawsuit from last month, a patient said Pixel gathered data from the UC San Francisco and Dignity Health portals that was used to deliver ads related to heart and knee issues. The second lawsuit, from June, is broader and claims at least 664 providers shared medical info with Facebook through Pixel.
[...] They also follow a string of privacy-related US legal action against the social media giant. Meta is facing a DC Attorney General suit over Cambridge Analytica's collection of more than 70 million Americans' personal data. The company is also grappling with lawsuits over its deactivated facial recognition system, and only this year settled a 2012 class-action over the use of tracking cookies. These latest courtroom battles suggest that concerns about Meta's data gathering practices are far from over, even as the company makes its own efforts to crack down on misuse.
Previously: Facebook is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information From Hospital Websites – the Markup
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 04 2022, @12:38AM (2 children)
Intentionally violating HIPAA regulations? This doesn't warrant a 5 million dollar fine. It doesn't warrant a 50 million dollar fine. Let's jump two more orders of magnitude, and start considerations at 5 billion dollars. I'll entertain the idea of bumping that up to 50 billion. Congress needs to get involved, hold another hearing or six, and get in on burning everyone, including Zuch, all executives who have ever touched the medical data collection, and the company. Name and shame everyone, and punish them like rented mules. Then pass laws that will make my 50 billion dollar fine suggestion above look like child's play.
Just fucking BURN THEM!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2022, @05:22AM
(Score: 4, Funny) by Opportunist on Thursday August 04 2022, @06:57AM
They could crucify Zuck and put it on Twitch to recover the cost.
I'm fairly sure people would want to pay good money to see that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Thursday August 04 2022, @05:23AM (3 children)
Fuck Meta.
Fuck Zuck.
The only thing any of these data brokers are good at, is screwing you.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday August 04 2022, @08:16AM (1 child)
And it will be the best 16 seconds of your life -- every time.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 04 2022, @02:34PM
As they strive for ever greater performance and efficiency, I'm confident they will improve upon their 16 second time.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by bmimatt on Thursday August 04 2022, @09:22PM
I suppose it's safe to assume here, that the 'pixel' (javascript) is reading all form data and possibly other DOM elements. Could it just grab the whole DOM? Probably. Likely. Certainly, since it's Zuckface's 'product'.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mth on Thursday August 04 2022, @09:29AM (3 children)
This is wrong on so many levels.
My first reaction was that it's the hospital's fault for having a tracking pixel on their site in the first place. They are supposed to handle their patients' data carefully and sending any kind of patient data to Meta conflicts with that. I still think they're the main culprit here.
Reading the articles, it seems though that Meta was aware of sensitive data being sent their way and instead of telling the hospitals to stop doing that and discarding all data sent by the hospitals, they implemented a filter which doesn't actually guarantee that no senstive data is stored but gives them a way to pretend that they care. I hope the judge will see through that.
Then I wondered how the tracking pixel got on the hospital portals. Apparently it was part of an ad integration, but why are hospitals running ads on their patient portals? The heavy commercialization of health care looks like an underlying cause, a pre-existing condition if you will.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 04 2022, @02:37PM (2 children)
To avoid conflict of interest do not allow medical advice, doctors or drugs to be advertised on hospital portals.
Problem fixed.
Now ads on hospital portals will look like:
Have you been injured in an accident? Do you need help in recovering damages you are owed by the party who caused you harm?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2022, @08:43PM (1 child)
Hey, you saw the same ad I did from the law firm of Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe!
(Score: 2) by jb on Friday August 05 2022, @04:26AM
Must have had a change of partners recently then. I seem to recall the firm as Billem, Cheatham & Lye.