US healthcare marketplaces shared citizenship and race data with ad tech giants

A recent investigation by Bloomberg has uncovered that nearly all 20 U.S. state-run health insurance marketplaces have been sharing sensitive application data with major tech companies, including Google, LinkedIn, Meta, and Snap. This alarming revelation highlights the significant privacy risks posed by pixel trackers, which are commonly used in digital advertising to collect visitor data for analytics and debugging purposes. These trackers, when improperly configured, can also gather personal information, especially when embedded on websites containing sensitive content, such as health-related data. For instance, the health insurance exchange in New York reportedly shared extensive application details, including whether applicants disclosed information about incarcerated relatives. Meanwhile, the Washington, D.C. exchange collected data regarding applicants' sex and race, with attempts by TikTok's pixel tracker to obscure some of this information. According to Bloomberg, the D.C. exchange also shared residents' email addresses, phone numbers, and country identifiers with TikTok. Following this revelation, D.C. has halted the implementation of the TikTok tracker, while Virginia has taken down the Meta tracker after it was discovered to be sharing residents’ ZIP codes with the social media giant. This issue is not isolated; many telehealth startups and larger healthcare entities have previously faced similar challenges, often having to inform millions of individuals that their health information was inadvertently collected and shared with tech companies that monetize consumer data for advertising purposes. The latest findings from Bloomberg underscore the widespread impact of these pixel trackers on the population, particularly as over seven million Americans have purchased health insurance this year through state exchanges.