In recent months, Facebook has come under fire for collecting users’ private health information from hospital networks around the country. The latest such scandal occurred this week when a California man filed a class action lawsuit against Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, a LA-based mega-hospital, for sharing patient data with Facebook and other large tech companies.

According to the suit, Cedars-Sinai shared a wide range of sensitive data with the social media giant, including the types of treatment that patients were seeking, details about their doctors, and when they scheduled an appointment. All of this, the suit says, can help the company better target ads and profit off its users’ medical situations.

“By way of illustration, if a patient made an appointment with a doctor for treatment of cancer, the tracking code Cedars-Sinai put on its Website conveyed that information to Meta, which in turn allowed Meta to include that patient in marketing target groups that it offered to its other advertising clients who wanted to market to cancer patients,” the complaint says.

While this suit targets a hospital, there are other cases around the country aiming to hold Facebook accountable for this practice, too. While the company’s underlying thirst for our data isn’t likely to change anytime soon, these cases could cause it to reconsider the types of our info it wants to collect.

Recommended Resources

Choose what the experts use: award-winning cybersecurity you can trust and rely on.

Surf the web truly incognito. Try Bitdefender Premium VPN, the ultra-fast VPN that keeps your online identity and activities safe from hackers, ISPs and snoops.

System Mechanic 14 – Make your computer run like new. Winner of 200+ Editor’s Choice awards!