This class action alleges that Sharp Healthcare did not properly safeguard its patients’ personal and health information, but it’s not about a data breach; it’s about the Meta Pixel tracking tool the complaint alleges was installed on the Sharp Memorial Hospital’s patient appointment scheduling page, which transmits information to Meta Platforms, Inc.
The class for this action is all natural persons in California who, within the applicable statute of limitations, used the Sharp scheduling page and had their personal information collected through the Meta Pixel.
The Meta Pixel is a bit of JavaScript code that can be placed into another company’s website to track actions of visitors to the website. It records the pages they visit, the buttons they click on, the information they enter, and so on, the complaint alleges, then sends the information to be stored at Meta.
The complaint alleges that Sharp has thus been sharing the patients’ interactions with the scheduling page, without their knowledge or permission. The complaint claims, “Meta then aggregated this data across all websites in order to build a dossier of that patient’s activity, labeled with the patient’s IP address, and matched to the patient’s Facebook and/or Instagram account…”
According to the complaint, the information shared with Meta may have included such things as the “patient’s medical condition, prescriptions, appointments, test results, diagnoses, allergies, sexual treatment status, reason for requesting an appointment, and more.”
Also, according to the complaint, if a patient was logged in to Facebook when they visited Sharp’s website or appointment scheduling page where the Meta Pixel was embedded, Meta may have linked their private information to their Facebook account.” If the patient was not logged in to Facebook at the time, Meta collects information entered, such as first and last names and phone numbers, and uses them to connect the patient to a specific Facebook profile. Even if the person has no connection with Facebook, and has never agreed to a Facebook or Meta privacy policy, the complaint alleges, Meta still collects the information in a file.
The complaint quotes Sharp’s Notice of Privacy Practices as saying that Sharp is “responsible for safeguarding [patients’] protected health information” (PHI) and that “information about [patients] and [patients’] health is confidential.” Yet, according to the complaint, it would have been Sharp that chose to allow the Meta Pixel to be embedded in its website appointment scheduling page.
Why would a party like Sharp do this? The complaint claims that the Meta Pixel allows Sharp to create a library of data on users and analyze it.
According to the complaint, Sharp has claimed it did not send any personally identifiable information to Meta, but the complaint calls this “highly unlikely,” because of Meta Pixel’s characteristics and the way it works.
Article Type: LawsuitTopic: Privacy
Most Recent Case Event
Sharp Healthcare Sharing of Patient Information with Meta Pixel Complaint
December 22, 2022
This class action alleges that Sharp Healthcare did not properly safeguard its patients’ personal and health information, but it’s not about a data breach; it’s about the Meta Pixel tracking tool the complaint alleges was installed on the Sharp Memorial Hospital’s patient appointment scheduling page, which transmits information to Meta Platforms, Inc.
Sharp Healthcare Sharing of Patient Information with Meta Pixel ComplaintCase Event History
Sharp Healthcare Sharing of Patient Information with Meta Pixel Complaint
December 22, 2022
This class action alleges that Sharp Healthcare did not properly safeguard its patients’ personal and health information, but it’s not about a data breach; it’s about the Meta Pixel tracking tool the complaint alleges was installed on the Sharp Memorial Hospital’s patient appointment scheduling page, which transmits information to Meta Platforms, Inc.
Sharp Healthcare Sharing of Patient Information with Meta Pixel Complaint