Key takeaways:
- Covered California, the website Californians use to shop for health care plans, sent sensitive health data to LinkedIn.
- The data, collected via trackers, included whether people were pregnant, blind and used prescription drugs.
- Covered California has since removed the trackers and said it is reviewing its policies.
Californians unknowingly had their health data sent by a state-backed organization to LinkedIn, an investigation found.
Trackers on health insurance marketplace Covered California's website, coveredca.com, gathered sensitive health information that was sent to LinkedIn as part of an advertising campaign, according to an investigation by The Markup, a nonprofit journalism outlet covering technology.
Covered California, created in 2010 under the Affordable Care Act, has said that as many as one in six Californians have enrolled for health insurance through its service.
The data Covered California sent to LinkedIn included if people were pregnant, blind, used a high number of prescription drugs, transgender and victims of domestic abuse.
The Markup determined the information was being collected and sent after a monthslong investigation that reviewed trackers on websites.
No longer used in advertising
A spokesperson for Covered California told The Markup that the data was sent to LinkedIn as part of an advertising campaign, but the health insurance marketplace has since ended the practice.
"All active advertising-related tags across our website have been turned off out of an abundance of caution," the spokesperson said. "Covered California has initiated a review of our websites and information security and privacy protocols to ensure that no analytics tools are impermissibly sharing sensitive consumer information."
A LinkedIn spokesperson told The Markup that the social media company's policies prohibit advertisers using sensitive data.
“Our Ads Agreement and documentation expressly prohibit customers from installing the Insight Tag on web pages that collect or contain sensitive data, including pages offering health-related services," the spokesperson said.
LinkedIn is currently facing multiple lawsuits alleging that it violated users' privacy by collecting information from medical appointment sites, including from a fertility clinic, trade publication Bank Info Security reported.
The Markup has a free online tool called Backlight where you can check the trackers on a website.