Hospitals Are Sending Patient Information to Facebook

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While this is likely a stupid mistake that has metastasized, it's pretty hard to believe.

Quote:

A tracking tool installed on many hospitals’ websites has been collecting patients’ sensitive health information—including details about their medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor’s appointments—and sending it to Facebook.

The Markup tested the websites of Newsweek’s top 100 hospitals in America. On 33 of them we found the tracker, called the Meta Pixel, sending Facebook a packet of data whenever a person clicked a button to schedule a doctor’s appointment. The data is connected to an IP address—an identifier that’s like a computer’s mailing address and can generally be linked to a specific individual or household—creating an intimate receipt of the appointment request for Facebook.
...
On the website of University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, for example, clicking the “Schedule Online” button on a doctor’s page prompted the Meta Pixel to send Facebook the text of the button, the doctor’s name, and the search term we used to find her: “pregnancy termination.”

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.”

My local system was not using the tool, but the system in the adjacent county was. They immediately suspended use of the tool when this report came out, but it's still pretty bad.

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@engineer,

It's far beyond bad

What makes you think it's a mistake?

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@Joeblow,

Because a lot of hospitals actually do value patient privacy and there is no evidence that the hospitals were getting renumeration for sending the data. It looks like that wanted a tracking tool to see what their traffic looked like and ended up using something that leaked data. Facebook, not so innocent.

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@engineer,

I don't want to put you in the unenviable position of defending the hospital, but I think most hospitals, as entities, care about money.

As a 60 something near luddite, even I know there's no excuse for that kind of "mistake." It's inexcusable.

1 Reply

@Joeblow,

Oh, I agree, there is no excuse. On the other hand, hospital IT departments are not what we have in the corporate world. I could see some IT person thinking "I'll just use this convenient tracking app" and everyone else copying it.

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@engineer,

I am against abortions but I am for privacy.

1. Abortions was used for selfishness. Like how Queen Elizabeth and tons of boyfriends but never got pregnant. Their are a lot of them out there. Thus came to process of making somebody infertile.
2. Abortions was used for religion.
3. Abortions was used for racism.

While yes abortion procedure could be done to save a persons life other advancement in medical has also prevented or corrected that problem.

0 Replies

@engineer,

Actually what happens is that you usually have a piece of software ( especially free software ) because is "online" via network, and this little instance, program, or line acts.

The IT people have no say because as with the Theater Electric people they are only dealing with an "Out of the box" mentality retaining to "order of operations" to their "job". If they did went "above and beyond" their duties only then it would be their concern. Chances are they have no idea the software or instance is running. Because it is part of the package itself any anti-virus software would flag it ok, and not the opposite.

The program/instance in question would not really do anything for you, because it is more about Facebook and it's role in the software package.

Try installing "no scripts" within your web browser ( even older browsers llike Mozilla base can use it ). The amount of pages with scripts retaining to

Yahoo ( web beacons )
Facebook ( via a website login )
Google ( whether or not you log in google is collecting a database on most likely users )

Among other AD servers etc, that is running in the background.

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@Joeblow,

Another problem is that iphone 4 ( at the time unless another model ) had tracking information being sent to google at one point. This software was installed part of the OS and had to be turned off manually.

You have to ask yourself. How does a website like Facebook, Yahoo, Google, etc actually have offices and buildings with tons of employees ( like custodians ) and is able to pay those people?

Oh look anti-privacy and data collecting.

Ever heard of a "Permanent Record" ? I will be honest I got my file. Actually had an incident from which I was in a fight. It even had the times when I was probation, and when I was in the hospital when I was sick.

Nowadays a permanent record is nothing in comparison to the "freedoms" we have on the internet and these companies are cashing in on it. In fact before 2011 the government had to purchase access to somebodies email. But because of Anti-privacy-laws they now have back door access to your email, which pushed for the "changing of your password during that time". Even the whole Snowden thing ( the guy who whistle blew on the NSA and data collecting tactics ) is the reason why we have HTTPS all over the place.

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If I didn't already know how to curse, I would pay for lessons....siiiggghhhhhhhhh.

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Hospitals Are Sending Patient Information to Facebook

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