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Twelve of the largest drug stores in the U.S. sent shoppers’ sensitive health information to Facebook or other platforms.
Twelve of the largest drug stores in the U.S. sent shoppers’ sensitive health information to Facebook or other platforms.
How is this not a HIPAA violation?
It is. Pharmacies like CVS fall under covered entities, and must adhere to HIPAA regulations.
The article discusses this.
In these cases, a pixel on the pharmacy website is being downloaded by your IP address. I don’t think there’s anything there would constitute PHI (Protected Health Information) under HIPAA.
In isolation, this data means nothing. But these massive companies can easily link an IP address to a person. And each pixel has a different URL, which identifies what page is calling it (eg, the page that says you’ve added an HIV test to your cart).
The results of the test would be covered by HIPAA, as would any test administered by a doctor or in a hospital setting. But in a pharmacy only prescriptions are covered by HIPAA - anything non-prescription is unprotected.
So if you’re privacy conscious and using something like NextDNS to block pixels and other shady tracking mechanisms at the DNS level, all’s good? When I left Facebook back in 2016, I started with Pihole, but I like NextDNS because it’s easier to use when not at home and I can manage profiles for family members easily in case to do find something they “need” to work. Why people willingly want to see ads is beyond me.
It’s hard to say, but basic precautions like a browser based ad blocker would filter out probably 90%+ of this tracking. Firefox and Safari even have this baked in to the browser, you just need to turn it on.
The built in “do not track” features require companies to operate in good faith and honor that. I have zero trust In that.
I’m not talking about “Do Not Track”. I’m talking about features like this:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/trackers-and-scripts-firefox-blocks-enhanced-track
It’s a Firefox setting that specifically blocks pixels and cross-site cookies. It’s turned on by default, and you can increase it to “strict” if you value privacy over comparability.
Ah, wasn’t aware of that one. Thanks for the info.
HIPAA requires you to know about it to make a complaint. Also, corporations may not count as healthcare providers, so they sneak through a loophole.
None of this is correct. HIPAA obligations are not contingent on a complaint, and being incorporated absolutely is not incompatible with being a healthcare provider.