Author archives

Colin Lecher is a reporter based in New York. His work on technology and society has received honors from the Association of Health Care Journalists, the Deadline Club, the Radio Television Digital News Association, and more. Before joining The Markup, he was a senior reporter with The Verge. There, he reported on issues like automated cuts to healthcare, access to phone services in prisons, and the online gun market.

We caught 4 more states sharing personal health data with Big Tech

State-run health care websites around the country, meant to provide a simple way to shop for insurance, have been quietly sending visitors’ sensitive health information to Google and social media companies, Colin Lecher and Tomas Apodaca of The Markup and CalMatters found. The data, including prescription drug names and dosages, was sent by web trackers on state exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act to help Americans purchase health coverage. The exchange websites ask users to answer a series of questions, including about their health histories, to find them the most relevant information on plans. But in some cases, when visitors responded to sensitive questions, the invisible trackers sent that information to platforms like Google, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. The Markup and CalMatters audited the websites of all 19 states that independently operate their own online health exchange. While most of the sites contained advertising trackers of some kind, The Markup and CalMatters found that four states exposed visitors’ sensitive health information.

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Subjects: Big Data, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Health, Healthcare, Legal Research, Privacy, Search Engines, Social Media

Mortgage Brokers Sent People’s Estimated Credit, Address, and Veteran Status to Facebook

When someone applies for a mortgage, they trust a home loan lender or mortgage broker with some of the most sensitive information they have: information about their credit, their home, and the personal details of their lives. Unbeknownst to those prospective homeowners, they may also be sharing that information with Facebook. The Markup tested more than 700 websites that offer loans for people looking to purchase or refinance a home, from major online brokers to lesser-known regional lenders, and found that more than 200 of them share some amount of user data with Facebook. On their sites, these companies embedded the Meta Pixel, a small piece of tracking software that shares visitors’ information with Facebook. As users filled out mortgage applications or requested quotes for mortgage rates, the pixel tracked information about their credit, veteran status, occupation, the specific homes they wanted, and more. Experts told Colin Lecher and Ross Teixeira of The Markup that it might be against the law for mortgage lenders to feed this kind of information to Facebook.

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Subjects: Business Research, Financial System, Legal Research, Privacy, Social Media

Suicide Hotlines Promise Anonymity. Dozens of Their Websites Send Sensitive Data to Facebook

Reporter Colin Lecher and Data Journalist Jon Kreeger discuss how websites for mental health crisis resources across the country—which promise anonymity for visitors, many of whom are at a desperate moment in their lives—have been quietly sending sensitive visitor data to Facebook. Dozens of websites tied to the national mental health crisis 988 hotline, which launched last summer, transmit the data through a tool called the Meta Pixel, according to testing conducted by The Markup. That data often included signals to Facebook when visitors attempted to dial for mental health emergencies by tapping on dedicated call buttons on the websites.

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Subjects: Big Data, Health, Healthcare, KM, Legal Research, Social Media
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