GoodRx then used the personal information to target users with ads for medications on Facebook and Instagram, the complaint said, “all of which was visible to Facebook.” GoodRx also targeted users who had looked up information on sexually transmitted diseases on HeyDoctor, the company’s telemedicine service, with ads for HeyDoctor’s S.T.D. But unlike a person’s blood test results and other patient information collected by doctors and hospitals - which are protected by the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA - personal health details that tens of millions of consumers enter into apps or search for online, like the names of drugs or diseases, are specifically covered by few legal protections.įrom 2017 to 2020, GoodRx uploaded the contact information of users who had bought certain medications, like birth control or erectile dysfunction pills, to Facebook so that the drug discount app could identify its users’ social media profiles, the F.T.C. Over the last two decades, start-ups and giant tech companies have introduced a range of fitness devices, smartwatches and fertility apps. The F.T.C.’s case against GoodRx could upend widespread user-profiling and ad-targeting practices in the multibillion-dollar digital health industry, and it puts companies on notice that regulators intend to curb the nearly unfettered trade in consumers’ health details. And it underscores the F.T.C.’s intensifying efforts to push digital health services to beef up their user privacy and security protections. The crackdown on GoodRx comes at a moment of heightened concern over the leaking of sensitive health information, particularly in states that have banned or severely limited abortions.
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