Facebook and several prestigious cancer organizations and health systems have been mining private healthcare data on cancer patients to sell advertising, a class-action suit claims. Facebook denies the charges and plans on fighting the suit, filed last week in federal court in San Jose, California, according to a report by Courthouse News Service.
The plaintiffs claimed that the websites of the healthcare organizations contain secret “Facebook code” that “commandeers” browsers to capture protected health information and forward the information to Facebook. Facebook then allegedly delivers ads based on this personal data, in violation of HIPAA, the federal Wiretap Act and several state laws.
As Courthouse News Service reported:
When [lead plaintiff Winston] Smith searched for information on lung cancer at the American Cancer Society’s website cancer.org, the information he sought and links he clicked were sent to Facebook without his knowledge or consent, he says.
The lawsuit cites a chart Facebook uses to sell advertising services, which places more than 225 million users in 154 separate medical categories for direct marketing purposes.
“Facebook’s application for advertisers touts its ability to target users based on information Facebook has collected about them relating to health care,” the complaint states.
The American Cancer Society and Facebook are among eight named defendants. The others are the American Society of Oncology, the Melanoma Research Foundation, Winter Park, Florida-based Adventist Health System, St. Louis-based BJC Healthcare, Cleveland Clinic and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
A Facebook spokeswoman called the lawsuit “without merit,” according to Courthouse News Service. The American Cancer Society declined to comment for that story.
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Smith told the publication that he was unsure if the cancer institutes named in the suit were aware of Facebook’s practices. He also said that Facebook does not track personal health information on “most medical websites.” The suit specifically absolved Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins Medicine, Courthouse News Service reported.
Photo: Flickr user Josh Hallett
