Meta Faces Mounting Questions From Congress on Health Data Privacy
upstart writes:
Meta is facing mounting questions about its access to sensitive medical data following a Markup investigation that found the company's pixel tracking tool collecting details about patients' doctor's appointments, prescriptions, and health conditions on hospital websites.
During a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) requested that Meta-the parent company of Facebook and Instagram-provide a "comprehensive and precise" accounting of the medical information it keeps on users.
[...] In response to Ossoff's question about whether Meta has medical or health care data about its users, Meta chief product officer Chris Cox responded, "Not to my knowledge." Cox also promised to follow up with a written response to the committee.
[...] "Advertisers should not send sensitive information about people through our Business Tools," Meta spokesperson Dale Hogan wrote to The Markup in an emailed statement. "Doing so is against our policies and we educate advertisers on properly setting up Business tools to prevent this from occurring. Our system is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data it is able to detect."
Meanwhile, developments in another legal case suggest Meta may have a hard time providing the Senate committee with a complete account of the sensitive health data it holds on users.
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