US healthcare marketplaces shared citizenship and race data with ad tech giants

美国医疗保健市场与广告科技巨头共享公民身份和种族数据

Almost all of the 20 U.S. state government-run health insurance marketplaces shared residents’ application information with advertising and tech giants, including Google, LinkedIn, Meta, and Snap, according to a new investigation by Bloomberg. 根据彭博社的一项最新调查，美国 20 个州政府运营的健康保险市场中，几乎所有市场都与包括谷歌 (Google)、领英 (LinkedIn)、Meta 和 Snap 在内的广告和科技巨头共享了居民的申请信息。

The report drives home the privacy problems created by pixel-sized trackers, which allow website owners to collect information about their visitors, often for web analytics and identifying bugs. A common tool in digital advertising, these trackers also allow the collection of personal information if misconfigured and placed on websites that contain sensitive content, such as healthcare data. 该报告强调了由像素级追踪器引发的隐私问题。这些追踪器允许网站所有者收集访客信息，通常用于网络分析和识别漏洞。作为数字广告中的常用工具，如果配置不当并被放置在包含敏感内容（如医疗保健数据）的网站上，这些追踪器也会导致个人信息的泄露。

Per Bloomberg, New York’s health insurance exchange shared information with several tech companies about a person’s application, including whether they provided details about whether they have incarcerated family members. The health insurance exchange for Washington, D.C. also asked residents about the person’s sex and race, which TikTok’s pixel tracker attempted to redact. Some races were masked and others were not, the publication reported. 据彭博社报道，纽约州的健康保险交易平台与多家科技公司共享了有关个人申请的信息，其中包括申请人是否提供了有关其是否有家人被监禁的详细信息。华盛顿特区的健康保险交易平台也询问了居民的性别和种族，TikTok 的像素追踪器试图对这些信息进行脱敏处理。该媒体报道称，部分种族信息被掩盖，但另一些则没有。

A spokesperson for the Washington, D.C. exchange told Bloomberg that residents’ email address, phone number, and country identifiers were also shared with TikTok. Washington, D.C. paused its rollout of the TikTok tracker, and Virginia removed the Meta tracker from its website after Bloomberg found it was sharing residents’ ZIP codes with the tech giant. 华盛顿特区交易平台的一位发言人告诉彭博社，居民的电子邮件地址、电话号码和国家标识符也被共享给了 TikTok。在彭博社发现弗吉尼亚州的网站将居民的邮政编码共享给 Meta 后，该州移除了网站上的 Meta 追踪器；华盛顿特区也暂停了 TikTok 追踪器的使用。

This is not a new problem, and has previously caught out telehealth startups and healthcare giants alike. Several companies and healthcare giants have had to notify millions that they inadvertently collected and shared their health information with tech giants, whose profits are derived from using consumer data for advertising. 这不是一个新问题，此前远程医疗初创公司和医疗保健巨头都曾因此“中招”。多家公司和医疗巨头不得不通知数百万用户，称其无意中收集并与科技巨头共享了他们的健康信息，而这些科技巨头的利润正是源于利用消费者数据进行广告投放。

But Bloomberg’s investigation shows that these pixel trackers can affect large swathes of the population when placed on government websites. The publication noted that more than seven million Americans purchased health insurance for this year through a state health insurance exchange. 但彭博社的调查显示，当这些像素追踪器被放置在政府网站上时，可能会影响到广大民众。该媒体指出，今年有超过 700 万美国人通过州健康保险交易平台购买了健康保险。