Facebook caught stealing medical records from patient portals

In my post, The data we don’t know needs protecting, we discussed a scenario in which Facebook could match in-app activity with real-world purchasing behavior to track a user’s menstrual cycle. It turns out, Facebook would rather tap directly into peoples’ private patient portals. Meta now faces a lawsuit.

From Business Insider:

The complaint says that these hospitals used Meta's Pixel tool, which accessed patients' password-protected portals and shared sensitive health information that Meta then sold to Facebook advertisers. 

BI reports that The Markup, a non-profit, conducted an investigation in June where it found that 33 of 100 hospitals in the US use Meta Pixel, the tool for stealing private medical data.

Brendan Carr, the FCC Chairman who sent a letter to Apple and Google demanding they remove TikTok from their respective app stores due to privacy concerns, hasn’t said a word about the Facebook news. But he did start tweeting about TikTok again when the story dropped.

In another post, I mentioned that a few of Carr’s direct reports left the FCC to work at Target Victory— the right-wing public relations company hired by Mark Zuckerberg to smear TikTok. Weird.

Brendan Carr @BrendanCarrFCC

Update: Citing the concerns raised about #TikTok user data being accessed by the Communist Party of China, leaders of the U.K. Parliament state that they are shutting down its TikTok account “with immediate effect.” https://t.co/mbmN5EsEZZ

Brendan Carr @BrendanCarrFCC

NEW: Members of the U.K. Parliament raise fresh concerns about #TikTok sending data into China in a sign of increasing global scrutiny. “The prospect of Xi Jinping’s government having access to personal data on our children’s phones ought to be a cause for major concern.” https://t.co/oQd4F2WPTn