An anonymous reader cites the Guardian's report. Research published today shows that hospitals are places where people implicitly expect their personal information to remain private, yet they frequently use tracking technologies on their websites. and share user information with Google, Meta, data brokers, and other third parties. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed a nationally representative sample of 100 non-federal acute care hospitals (essentially traditional hospitals with emergency departments) and found that 96 percent of websites It turned out that the data was being sent to a third party. Additionally, not all of these websites had privacy policies. Additionally, of the 71 percent that did disclose, 56 percent disclosed the specific third-party companies that may receive user information.
The researchers' latest study is based on findings published a year ago of 3,747 non-federal hospital websites in the United States. They found that 98.6% tracked and forwarded visitor data to large technology companies, social media companies, advertising companies, and data brokers. To find trackers on websites, the team on January 26 used webXray, an open-source tool that detects third-party HTTP requests and matches them to the organization receiving the data, to track each I checked the hospital's website. We also recorded the number of third-party cookies per page. One name in particular stood out to me in terms of who was receiving information about website visitors. “In every study we've done, Alphabet Inc.'s Google appears on almost every page, including hospitals, in every part of the health care system.” [Dr Ari Friedman, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania] observed. “It just declines from there,” he continued. “Meta was featured on just over half of the hospital's web pages, and Meta's pixel is notable because he is one of the most obvious entities in terms of tracking.”
Both Meta and Google's tracking technology has been the subject of criminal charges and lawsuits over the years, as have some healthcare companies that shared data with these and other advertisers. Additionally, Friedman noted that 20 to 30 percent of hospitals share data with Adobe. “Everyone knows about Adobe for PDF. My understanding is that Adobe also has a tracking division within its advertising division.” In addition to digital marketing companies, the list also includes tech giants Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon. Additionally, there are analytics companies such as Hotjar and data brokers such as his Acxiom. “And two-thirds of his hospital websites had some sort of data transfer to third-party domains that he couldn't even identify,” he added. Of his 71 hospital website privacy policies the team found, 69 addressed the type of user information collected. The most common were IP address (80 percent), web browser name and version (75 percent), pages visited on the website (73 percent), and his website the user visited (73 percent). Only 56% of these policies identified the third-party companies receiving user information. In lieu of U.S. federal data privacy laws, Friedman advises users to protect their personal information using Ghostery and Privacy Badger, browser-based tools that identify and block transfers to third-party domains. is recommended.