There has been an alarming development in this area as the importance of user data is gradually increasing. It turns out that mental health startup Cerebral shares private patient data with Google, Meta and TikTok.
Cerebral, a telehealth startup that gained popularity in the early days of the pandemic, announced this week that it shared the personal data of more than 3.1 million US patients with social media companies such as Google, Meta and TikTok, and advertisers. The irresponsible sharing of highly private data is highly worrisome. On the other hand, if you’re wondering why today’s startups should scare you, Cerebral is just the latest example.
Private Patient Data Shared for Advertising
A recent notice uploaded to Cerebral’s website reveals that since the company went live in October 2019, it has used “Pixels”, tracking scripts that companies like Meta provide to third-party developers for advertising purposes, to collect user data. According to the reports, through Meta Pixel, Cerabral shared data such as the names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, dates of birth, IP addresses and other demographic information of its patients protected under the law with third parties. Additionally, Cerebral collects and shares private patient data collected from online mental health self-assessment, which may include patient-selected services, assessment responses, and other relevant health information.
Cerebral transfers patients’ data to technology giants in real time through the trackers and other data collection codes it places in its applications, while companies such as Google, Facebook and TikTok use this data as advertisements. Although Cerebral said that it removed the tracking codes from its applications a while ago, it is unclear whether the collected data will be deleted both from themselves and from the places where they were transmitted.
