In a very comprehensive post from the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Technology, the FTC takes what it calls “[a] deep dive into the technical side of FTC’s recent cases on digital health platforms, GoodRx & BetterHelp.”
As most readers know, the FTC recently took enforcement action against GoodRx and BetterHelp, two digital healthcare platforms, for allegedly sharing user health data with third parties for advertising.… More
On December 1, 2022, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a bulletin to highlight the obligations of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) on covered entities and business associates under the HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules (“HIPAA Rules”) when using online tracking technologies. These online tracking technologies, like Google Analytics or Meta Pixel,… More
On September 19, 2022, a Massachusetts federal District Court denied Boston Globe Media Partners LLC’s motion to dismiss a consumer class action suit against it. This case is one of 47 proposed class actions filed since February 2022 against various companies, each based on a company’s use of Meta’s Pixel tracking tool.
Boston Globe Media Partners is a “multimedia organization that provides news, entertainment, and commentary across multiple brands and platforms”;… More
Very interesting discussion in the most recent Journal of the American Medical Association, “Information Technology–Based Tracing Strategy in Response to COVID-19 in South Korea—Privacy Controversies.”
The sources of information are staggering in their breadth: mobile phone carriers, immigration services, law enforcement, credit card companies, public transit companies, government agencies, health insurers and health care providers. It is difficult to imagine this type of tracing in the United States.… More
Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about Google’s iPhone tracking.
Google Inc. and other advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple Inc.’s Web browser on their iPhones and computers—tracking the Web-browsing habits of people who intended for that kind of monitoring to be blocked.
The companies used special computer code that tricks Apple’s Safari Web-browsing software into letting them monitor many users.… More
Microsoft announced yesterday in its IE blog that it will be adding a tracking protection feature to Internet Explorer 9. In particular, Microsoft promises that:
Together with the FTC’s jump into the tracking fray last week,… More