A new report suggested Facebook received sensitive medical information from hospital websites. The Markup tested 100 hospital websites and on 33 of them discovered a tracking tool called “Meta Pixel” that collected patients’ sensitive health information, including medical conditions, prescriptions, and medical appointments:
“Clicking the ‘Schedule Online Now’ button for a doctor on the website of Froedtert Hospital, in Wisconsin, prompted the Meta Pixel to send Facebook the text of the button, the doctor’s name, and the condition we selected from a dropdown menu: ‘Alzheimer’s.’”
The Markup said it did not find any instances where patient consent was expressly obtained beforehand.
Experts expressed concern about the privacy implications of the data retrieval.“I am deeply troubled by what [the hospitals] are doing with the capture of their data and the sharing of it,” David Holtzman, a former HIPAA senior privacy adviser in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for […]
Read the rest of this story here: www.newsbusters.org
