Health insurance giant Kaiser will notify millions of a data breach after sharing patients’ data with advertisers
U.S. health conglomerate Kaiser is notifying millions of current and former members of a data breach after confirming it shared patients’ information with third-party advertisers, including Google, Microsoft and X (formerly Twitter).
In a statement shared with TechCrunch, Kaiser said that it conducted an investigation that found “ certain online technologies, previously installed on its websites and mobile applications, may have transmitted personal information to third-party vendors.”
Kaiser said that the data shared with advertisers includes member names and IP addresses, as well as information that could indicate if members were signed into a Kaiser Permanente account or service and how members “interacted with and navigated through the website and mobile applications, and search terms used in the health encyclopedia.”
Kaiser is the latest healthcare organization to confirm it shared patients’ personal information with third-party advertisers by way of online tracking code, often embedded in web pages and mobile apps and designed to collect information about users’ online activity for analytics. Over the past year, telehealth startups Cerebral, Monument and Tempest have pulled tracking code from their apps that shared patients’ personal and health information with advertisers.
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