Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has been sued along with a couple of US hospitals for violating patient privacy through the Meta Pixel tracker.
The two class action lawsuits against Meta allege that it used people’s medical data without permission for targeted ads on Facebook based on the illnesses they had.
According to The Verge, an investigation by The Markup found that “33 of the top 100 hospitals in the United States use the Meta Pixel on their websites. At seven hospitals, it was installed on password-protected patient portals. The investigation found that the tool was sending information about patient health conditions, doctor appointments, and medication allergies to Facebook.”
Among the hospitals that used the Meta tool to obtain sensitive information from patients are:
- Johns Hopkins
- UCLA Reagan Medical Center
- New York Presbyterian Hospital
- Northwestern Memorial Hospital
- Duke University Hospital
The lawsuit, which was filed last week in the Northern District of California, is the second of its kind accusing US hospitals of providing Meta with confidential patient information and violating HIPAA.
The other class action lawsuit, which was filed in June, claims that at least 664 health care providers, such as hospitals and health centers, shared medical information with Facebook through Meta Pixel.
