Lawsuits have been filed against Meta and Medstar Health System in Maryland, and Meta and UCSF Medical Center/ Dignity Health Medical Foundation. In some cases, their personal and private information was used to serve them target advertisements related to their medical conditions, as a result of their interactions on the websites of their healthcare providers. Following the discovery, patients affected by the breach took legal action against their healthcare providers and Meta over the impermissible disclosure. These two healthcare systems are far from the only ones affected by the use of Meta Pixel and other third-party tracking code on their websites.Īn analysis, published by The Markup/STAT in June suggested one-third of the top 100 hospitals in the United States had included the code on their websites, including at least 6 that had incorporated the code within their password-protected patient portals. Now, Advocate Aurora Health has confirmed that it too included the tracking code, which resulted in the impermissible disclosure of the protected health information of up to 3,000,000 patients. Then WakeMed Health and Hospitals said the information of around 500,000 patients may have been impermissibly disclosed. First came Novant Health, with its admission that the protected health information of 1.36 million patients had been sent to Meta. “We learned that pixels or similar technologies installed on our patient portals available through M圜hart and LiveWell websites and applications, as well as on some of our scheduling widgets, transmitted certain patient information to the third-party vendors that provided us with the pixel technology.Advocate Aurora Health: Website Tracking Code May Have Impermissibly Disclosed PHI of 3 Million PatientsĪnother health system has announced that patient data has been impermissibly passed to Meta (Facebook) as a result of the inclusion of Meta Pixel tracking code on its website. These pixels or similar technologies were designed to gather information that we review in aggregate so that we can better understand patient needs and preferences to provide needed care to our patient population.” reads the Notice of data breach published by the company. To do so, pieces of code known as “pixels” were included on certain of our websites or applications. “In an effort to deliver high quality services to its community, Advocate Aurora Health uses the services of several third-party vendors to measure and evaluate information concerning the trends and preferences of its patients as they use our websites. Privacy experts pointed out that the Meta Pixel code, which is also used by many other hospitals, sends sensitive data to Meta that uses them for marketing purposes. Communications between M圜hart users, which may have included first and last names and medical record numbers.Dates, times, and locations of scheduled appointments.The compromised websites contained sensitive personal and medical information entered by the patients. The Meta Pixel is a snippet of JavaScript code that allows administrators to track visitor activity on their websites. The root cause of the data breach is the improper use of Meta Pixel on the websites of the organizations. The healthcare system operates 26 hospitals in Wisconsin and Illinois. The company is notifying the impacted individuals. The US-based hospital healthcare system Advocate Aurora Health (AAH) disclosed a data breach that exposed the personal data of 3,000,000 patients. Healthcare system Advocate Aurora Health (AAH) disclosed a data breach that exposed the personal data of 3,000,000 patients.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |