Skip to content
Technology & Innovation —

Why That Pain Reliever Ad Is Following You Around The Web

A new study of 20 health-related sites demonstrated that many contain tracking elements and/or leak search terms to third-party companies, providing data that “could [help] build up a very powerful document with all of your medical conditions.”
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

What’s the Latest Development?

More proof that the Internet knows all your business: A study of 20 popular health-related sites revealed that all of them contain at least one method to track individual user activity, and some share that activity with third-party advertising firms, which then use it to send targeted ads. University of Southern California professor and study author Marco D. Huesch used freely-available Web debug tools to identify site behavior. The study was published this week in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

What’s the Big Idea?

While Huesch understands the purpose of targeted advertising, he believes the use of health-related data for that purpose presents several potentially dangerous issues, not the least of which is the creating of user profiles containing “all of your medical conditions [and] the drugs you’re taking” along with other personal information. Worse, there’s the potential for what he calls “virtual redlining” in which healthy people receive “better” ads than sick people. Government-imposed privacy regulations that are now a common part of health care in the US exempt online targeted advertising, and the practice is growing despite criticism from privacy advocates.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

Read it at The Verge

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people
Related
PRIVACY POLICY
Effective Date: January 1, 2020 Last Updated: May 13, 2020 The Big Think, Inc. (“Big Think” or “we” or “us”) knows that you care about how your personal information is […]
Surprising Science
Business Model innovation for the Health Insurance Provider
Our idea offers a solution for how the for-profit health insurance provider business model can be innovated on to not only allow for active participation and collaboration by policyholders in the creation of value, generate additional revenue and help finance the cost of health plans, but also provide for the realization of an improved, and invariably more productive alignment of interests and strategies across the entire healthcare value network.
Surprising Science
Business Model innovation for the Health Insurance Provider
Our idea offers a solution for how the for-profit health insurance provider business model can be innovated on to not only allow for active participation and collaboration by policyholders in the creation of value, generate additional revenue and help finance the cost of health plans, but also provide for the realization of an improved, and invariably more productive alignment of interests and strategies across the entire healthcare value network.
Up Next