Meta, US hospitals sued for using healthcare data to target ads (UPDATED WITH ARXIV REFERENCE) [View all]

[usonian]

Last edited Tue Aug 2, 2022, 10:10 AM - Edit history (1)

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/meta-us-hospitals-sued-for-using-healthcare-data-to-target-ads/

Lots to unpack here within the guidelines.

Quote:
A class action lawsuit has been filed in the Northern District of California against Meta (Facebook), the UCSF Medical Center, and the Dignity Health Medical Foundation, alleging that the organizations are unlawfully collecting sensitive healthcare data about patients for targeted advertising.

This tracking and data collection allegedly takes place in medical portals beyond login walls, where patients enter highly sensitive information about themselves, their conditions, doctors, prescribed medication, and more.

According to the lawsuit, neither the hospitals nor Meta informs the patients about the data collection, no user consents are requested, and there is no visible indication of this process.

The plaintiffs realized the violation of their privacy when Facebook, the social media platform belonging to Meta, began targeting them with advertisements tailored explicitly for their medical condition.
Unquote.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/what-is-meta-pixel-the-code-detected-on-health-system-websites-in-nc-and-beyond/ar-AAYEVmd
What is Meta Pixel, the code detected on health system websites in NC and beyond?

Meta Pixel is a snippet of code used to track visitor activity. It has also been called Facebook Pixel.

Pixel collects information about what a user does on a website and what websites do in response, according to Meta for Developers, a Facebook site.

The information is sent to Meta, which returns information to website owners about how people use their sites and allows them to determine what ads users will see online and much more.

Events that are commonly recorded by Pixel include viewing a page, completing a registration form, adding payment information and scheduling an appointment.

Facts about facebook/meta pixel
https://madgicx.com/blog/facebook-pixel
Meta Pixel (Formerly Facebook Pixel) - The #1 Guide

https://theunicornofmarketing.com/what-is-a-meta-pixel/
What is a Meta Pixel?

How does it work?

Meta pixel code is triggered when consumers take action and report their actions. In Meta’s advertisements manager, you can see your Meta pixel activity report.

The pixel tracks consumer trips across your website and shows if they accomplished your intended activity, such as purchasing a product, subscribing to your newsletter, or filling out a form.

Learning about your customers and how they interact with your website and adverts may help you narrow down your target market, retarget custom audiences, and optimize your ads. The Meta pixel aids in the optimization of your adverts to boost consumer conversions.

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/meta-pixel/advanced
Meta for Developers
How to do it.


See also:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170886/hospital-websites-meta-pixel-tracker-facebook-hipaa
Hospital websites are sending medical information to Facebook
Experts say it might be a HIPAA violation

https://themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/2022/06/16/facebook-is-receiving-sensitive-medical-information-from-hospital-websites
Facebook Is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information from Hospital Websites

Experts say some hospitals’ use of an ad tracking tool may violate a federal law protecting health information

MORE THAN YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT TRACKING PIXELS.
PDF available from arxiv
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.00710 (downloads a PDF)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Facebook Web Tracking with Invisible Pixels and Click IDs
https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.00710
Paschalis Bekos, Panagiotis Papadopoulos, Evangelos P. Markatos, Nicolas Kourtellis

Over the past years, advertisement companies have used a variety of tracking methods to persistently track users across the web. Such tracking methods usually include (first-party) cookies, third-party cookies, cookie synchronisation, as well as a variety of fingerprinting mechanisms. To complement these tracking approaches, Facebook recently introduced a new tracking method that attaches a one-time tag as a URL parameter (namely FBCLID) on outgoing links to other websites. Although one-time tags do not seem to have enough information to persistently track users, we demonstrate that this tag, despite its ephemeral nature, when combined with Facebook Pixel, can aid in persistent tracking of users across space (i.e., different websites) and time (i.e., both in the past as well as in the future). We show that this tag can be used to track web users' activity in the distant past -- even before those users had a Facebook account. In addition, by combining this tag with cookies that have rolling expiration dates, Facebook can also track users' browsing activities in the far future as well. Our experimental results suggest that more than 20% of the popular websites out there have adopted this technology, and thus can contribute to this kind of user tracking on the web. Our longitudinal study shows that user tracking can go as back as 2015, or even as 2013 (when the precursor of this technology was first introduced by Facebook). To put it simply, if a user creates for the first time a Facebook account today, Facebook could track her web browsing activity as far back as 2015.