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from the ask-me-no-questions-and-I'll-tell-you-no-lies dept.
Meta is facing mounting questions about its access to sensitive medical data following a Markup investigation that found the company's pixel tracking tool collecting details about patients' doctor's appointments, prescriptions, and health conditions on hospital websites.
During a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) requested that Meta—the parent company of Facebook and Instagram—provide a "comprehensive and precise" accounting of the medical information it keeps on users.
[...] In response to Ossoff's question about whether Meta has medical or health care data about its users, Meta chief product officer Chris Cox responded, "Not to my knowledge." Cox also promised to follow up with a written response to the committee.
[...] "Advertisers should not send sensitive information about people through our Business Tools," Meta spokesperson Dale Hogan wrote to The Markup in an emailed statement. "Doing so is against our policies and we educate advertisers on properly setting up Business tools to prevent this from occurring. Our system is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data it is able to detect."
Meanwhile, developments in another legal case suggest Meta may have a hard time providing the Senate committee with a complete account of the sensitive health data it holds on users.
In March, two Meta employees testifying in a case about the Cambridge Analytica scandal told the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that it would be very difficult for the company to track down all the data associated with a single user account.
[...] The engineers' comments echo the same worries expressed in a 2021 privacy memo written by Facebook engineers that was leaked to Vice.
"We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and thus we can't confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as 'we will not use X data for Y purpose,' " the memo's authors wrote.
Previously:
Meta Faces Lawsuit for Allegedly Collecting Patient Health Data Without Consent
Facebook is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information From Hospital Websites – the Markup
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday September 25 2022, @07:22PM
I rarely need to enter personal info. Any site that asks for it gets bypassed and I move on. If there's no way around it, Boo Boo Bear it is. :) He lives in Jellystone Park.
Unless it's very legitimate. This site has one of my legit email addresses, so does green site, ebay, paypal, mortgage company, and a very few others I can't think of right now.
Email provider forced me into 2FA so I made up birthdates, last names, whatever else they tried to force out of me. They already somehow datamined phone numbers that are wrong. So did ebay. I've tried to communicate with them that phone numbers are very insecure but everyone seems fixated on getting your "mobile number". Mine has changed several times, and I plan to change it soon. I try to tell people that 1) cell numbers are very easy to change (just buy a new account), and 2) very easily hacked (compared to hard-line). I get effectively a blank stare (non-response). They're all indoctrinated to believe SMS is super secure and NOBODY else could ever get your text containing a critical passcode or other sensitive information. Ever hear of entering the wrong number? Hello, is anyone awake out there? Ever hear of hacking?
Effing paypal- right on their website they say you don't have to give a phone number. I never did, but they do everything they can to try to force it out of me. They say you can delete it (the totally incorrect one they datamined) but you can not. You can change it, but never delete it despite the lie on the previous webpage saying you can.
A practice that's bugging me is for example new Dr. office has too much of my info online. I'm not aware I gave them that permission, and even if I did, the unknown sharing and insecurity of it violates HIPAA.
My hope is the HIPAA violation will (finally) get the US govt. to do their jobs and crack down generally on privacy violation.
And if they don't, maybe doxing them will help them get the point.