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| Go tohttps://www.wddty.com/news/2019/11/health-sites-passing-medical-data-to-google-and-facebook.html for original WDDTY article |
This following transatlantic What Doctors Don't Tell You — aka Get Well — magazine online story came to me via my inbox., The key phrase in it for me in the context of there currently being an in-or-out-of the European Union General Election:
even though it is a legal requirement in the UK and Europe to do so
And I thought, "Nigel Farage, now leader of the Brexit Party, and other anti-EU voices within the UK such as Boris Johnson, have long spoken about EU regulations as "excessive red tape."
Here is the article:
Health sites passing medical data to Google and Facebook
About the author:
Bryan Hubbard
Some of the world's biggest health websites are sharing people's private medical information with Facebook, Google and Amazon.WebMD, Healthline, Babycentre and Bupa are capturing sensitive data—such as medical problems and symptoms, drugs that are being taken, and menstrual cycles—and passing it on for targeted advertising campaigns.
The sites are capturing the data without permission, even though it is a legal requirement in the UK and Europe to do so, by using 'cookies' that monitor activity, an undercover investigation by the Financial Times has revealed.
Drug names that were entered into the website, Drugs.com, were passed to Google's advertising arm, DoubleClick, while queries about heart disease that were keyed into the British Heart Foundation, Bupa and Healthline sites were sent on to specialist online advertising firms such as Scorecard and OpenX.
With the data from the cookies—pieces of code that are embedded on people's browsers—Google and the others can follow the person around the internet, and he will suddenly start seeing online advertisements about his condition or drugs for the problem.
Of the hundred health sites the FT analysed, 78 were passing on the data to DoubleClick, and 48 were also sending medical information to Amazon.
"This kind of data is clearly sensitive, has special protection and transmitting this data most likely violates the law," said Wolfie Christl, a researcher.
References
(Source: Financial Times, November 13, 2019)
What kind of online privacy — or lack of! — would we be likely to experience in the event of a pro-hard-Brexit 2019-elected government?
More references to this story at
private medical information google facebook bupa "european union"
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