by Mike Capuzzo, Childrens Health Defense:
Google, Microsoft, Facebook, TikTok and the majority of medical and healthcare websites illegally harvest and sell private health information despite a federal crackdown on the practice, according to a new cybersecurity report by Feroot Security.
Google, Microsoft, Facebook, TikTok and the majority of medical and healthcare websites illegally harvest and sell private health information despite a federal crackdown on the practice, according to a new cybersecurity report.
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The report, by Toronto-based cybersecurity firm Feroot Security, analyzed hundreds of healthcare websites and found that more than 86% are collecting private data and transferring it to advertisers, marketers and Big Tech social media companies without user consent and in violation of privacy laws.
As patients or consumers browse their favorite or trusted medical websites or sign in to hospital portals to access their private health records, invisible bits of HTML code — called “tracking pixels” — embedded on the websites harvest private information, such as whether patients have cancer, erectile dysfunction or are behind on their hospital bill.
The information is repackaged and sold for a variety of uses, including to companies that target individual users with internet ads, according to the report.
The risk of having personal data scraped is particularly high on log-in and registration pages where internet users supply troves of information, unaware it is being hijacked and sold. More than 73% of log-in and registration pages have invisible trackers that pirate personal health information, the study found.
Approximately 15% of the tracking pixels analyzed by Feroot record users’ keystrokes, harvesting social security numbers, usernames and passwords, credit card and banking information, and an infinite variety of personal health data, including medical diagnosis and treatment.
The study showed that “Google is the absolute dominant collector” of data. Ninety-two percent of the websites loaded on the Google search engine contained data-harvesting technology across wide sectors of the U.S. economy including healthcare and telehealth, banking and financial services, airlines, e-commerce, and the federal and state governments.
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