According to a bombshell report this week, the British national healthcare system has been sharing sensitive patient information with Facebook for years in what The Guardian is calling a “major breach of privacy.”

Of course, many health care providers are already facing lawsuits in the US over this same practice, so it isn’t a surprise to see the issue cropping up overseas. For its part, Facebook says it has filters in place to make sure it doesn’t receive individualized info that could reveal a person’s identity. However, privacy experts are still outraged by this exchange of sensitive data that includes information about patients visiting NHS pages for HIV, self-harm, sexual health, and more.

“This should have been stopped by regulators a long time ago. It is irresponsible, even negligent, and it must stop,” data privacy expert Wolfie Christl told The Guardian. “Meta says we don’t permit certain types of data being sent to us but they haven’t spent enough on resources to audit this.”

Facebook has built its business model on learning as much about us as it can, so the company has no incentive to stop this kind of mass data collection. However, if enough companies and health networks like this one put an end to it, Facebook may finally be forced to change its stance.

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