California sent residents' personal health data to LinkedIn

Summary

The Markup, now a part of CalMatters, uses investigative reporting, data analysis, and software engineering to challenge technology to serve the public good. Sign up for Klaxon, a newsletter that delivers our stories and tools directly to your inbox. The website that lets Californians shop for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, coveredca.com, has been sending sensitive data to LinkedIn, forensic testing by The Markup has revealed. As visitors filled out forms on the website, trackers on the same pages told LinkedIn their answers to questions about whether they were blind, pregnant, or used a high number of prescription medications. The trackers also monitored whether the visitors said they were transgender or possible victims of domestic abuse. Covered California, the organization that operates the website, removed the trackers as The Markup and CalMatters reported this article. The organization said they were removed “due to a marketing agency transition” in early April. In a statement, Kelly Donohue, a spokesperson for the agency, confirmed that data was sent to LinkedIn as part of an advertising campaign. Since being informed of the tracking, “all active advertising-related tags across our website have been turned off out of an abundance of caution,” she added. “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,” Donohue said, adding that they would “share additional findings as they become available, taking any necessary steps to safeguard the security and privacy of consumer data.” When an individual indicated they were pregnant, the information was sent to LinkedIn via the Insight Tag. Credit: Visitors who filled out health information on the site may have had their data tracked for more than a year, according to Donohue, who said the LinkedIn campaign began in February 2024. The Markup observed the trac...