Lily Hay Newman reports:
ALL TOO OFTEN, digital ads wind up improperly targeting the most vulnerable people online, including abuse victims and kids. Add to that list the customers of several digital-medicine and genetic-testing companies, whose sites used ad-tracking tools that could have exposed information about people’s health status.
In a recent study from researchers at Duke University and the patient privacy-focused group the Light Collective, 10 patient advocates who are active in the hereditary cancer community and cancer support groups on Facebook—including three who are Facebook group admins—downloaded and analyzed their data from the platform’s “Off Facebook Activity” feature in September and October. The tool shows what information third parties are sharing with Facebook, and its parent company Meta, about your activity on other apps and websites. Along with the retail and media sites that typically show up in these reports, the researchers found that several genetic-testing and digital-medicine companies had shared customer information with the social media giant for ad targeting.
Read more at Wired.
h/t, Joe Cadillic