XPost: alt.privacy, sac.politics, alt.politics.democrats.d
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https://timesofsandiego.com/health/2025/04/28/covered-california-data- linkedin/
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 CalMatters 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. (See the data on our Github repo.)
Covered California, the organization that operates the website, removed
the trackers as CalMatters and The Markup 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.”
https://i0.wp.com/calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pregnant- screenshots-CM.png?resize=1024%2C630&ssl=1
When an individual indicated they were pregnant, the information was sent
to LinkedIn via the Insight Tag.
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.
CalMatters observed the trackers directly in February and March of this
year. It confirmed most ad trackers, including the Meta “pixel” tracker,
as well as all third-party cookies, have been removed from the site as of
April 21.
Since 2014, more than 50 million Americans have signed up for health
insurance through state exchanges like Covered California. They were set
up under the Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Barack
Obama 15 years ago. States can either operate their exchange websites in partnership with the federal government or independently, as California
does.
Covered California operates as an independent entity within the state government. Its boardis appointed by the governor and Legislature.
In March, Covered California announced that, after four years of
increasing enrollment, a record of nearly 2 million people were covered by health insurance through the program. In all, the organization said, about
one in six Californians were at one point enrolled through Covered
California. Between 2014 and 2023, the uninsured rate fell from 17.2% to
6.4%, according to the organization, the largest drop of any state during
that time period. This coincided with a series of eligibility expansions
to Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance program for lower-income
households.
Experts expressed alarm at the idea that those millions of people could
have had sensitive health data sent to a private company without their knowledge or consent. Sara Geoghegan, senior counsel at the Electronic
Privacy Information Center, said it was “concerning and invasive” for a
health insurance website to be sending data that was “wholly irrelevant”
to the uses of a for-profit company like LinkedIn.
“It’s unfortunate,” she said, “because people don’t expect that their
health information will be collected and used in this way.”
The LinkedIn Insight Tag
CalMatters and The Markup in recent months scanned for trackers on
hundreds of California state and county government websites that offer
services for undocumented immigrants using Blacklight, an automated tool developed by The Markup for auditing website trackers.
CalMatters found that Covered California had more than 60 trackers on its
site. Out of more than 200 of the government sites, the average number of trackers on the sites was three. Covered California had dozens more than
any other website we examined.
On coveredca.com, trackers from well-known social media firms like Meta collected information on visitor page views, while lesser-known analytics
and media campaign companies like email marketing company LiveIntent also followed users across the site.
But by far the most sensitive information was transmitted to LinkedIn.
While some of the data sent to LinkedIn was relatively innocuous, such as
what pages were visited, Covered California also sent the company detailed information when visitors selected doctors to see if they were covered by
a plan, including their specialization. The site also told LinkedIn if
someone searched for a specific hospital.
https://i0.wp.com/calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/042425- COVERED-CA-BUG-medical-provider-screenshots-CM.jpg?resize=1024%2C630&ssl=1
When an individual selected a medical provider, the information was sent
to LinkedIn via the Insight Tag.
In addition to demographic information including gender, the site also
shared details with LinkedIn when visitors selected their ethnicity and
marital status, and when they told coveredca.com how often they saw
doctors for surgery or outpatient treatment.
https://i0.wp.com/calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/042425- COVERED-CA-BUG-race-ethnicity-screenshots-CM.jpg?resize=1024%2C630&ssl=1
When an individual selected their ethnicity, the information was sent to LinkedIn via the Insight Tag.
LinkedIn, like other large social media firms, offers a way for websites
to easily transmit data on their visitors through a tracking tool that the sites can place on their pages. In LinkedIn’s case, this tool is called
the Insight Tag.
By using the tag, businesses and other organizations can later target advertisements on LinkedIn to consumers that have already shown interest
in their products or services. For an e-commerce site, a tracker on a page might be able to note when someone added a product to their cart, and the business can then send ads for that product to the same person on their
social media feeds.
A health care marketplace like Covered California might use the trackers
to reach a group of people who might be interested in a reminder of a
deadline for open health insurance enrollment, for example.
In its statement, Covered California noted the usefulness of these tools, saying the organization “leverages LinkedIn’s advertising platform tools
to understand consumer behavior and deliver tailored messages to help them
make informed decisions about their health care options.”
https://i0.wp.com/calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/042425- COVERED-CA-BUG-domestic-abuse-screenshots-CM.jpg?resize=1024%2C630&ssl=1
When an individual indicated they were a victim of domestic abuse or
spousal abandonment, the information was sent to LinkedIn via the Insight
Tag.
Trackers can also be valuable to the social media companies that offer
them. In addition to driving ad sales, they provide an opportunity to
gather information on visitors to websites other than their own.
On its informational page about the Insight Tag, LinkedIn places the
burden on websites that employ the tag not to use it in risky situations.
The tag “should not be installed on web pages that collect or contain
Sensitive Data,” the page advises, including “pages offering specific health-related or financial services or products to consumers.”
LinkedIn spokesperson Brionna Ruff said in an emailed statement, “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.. We don’t allow
advertisers to target ads based on sensitive data or categories.”
Legal recourse
Collection of sensitive information by social media trackers has in
previous instances led to removal of the trackers, lawsuits, and scrutiny
by state and federal lawmakers.
For example, after The Markup in 2022 revealed the Department of Education
sent personal information to Facebook when students applied for college financial aid online, the department turned off the sharing, faced
questions from two members of Congress, and was sued by two advocacy
groups who sought more information about the sharing. Other stories in the
same series about trackers, known as the Pixel Hunt, also led to changes
and blowback, including a crackdown by the Federal Trade Commission on telehealth companies transmitting personal information to companies
including Meta and Google without user consent and proposed class action lawsuits over information shared through trackers with drug stores, health providers, and tax prep companies.
LinkedIn is already facing multiple proposed class-action lawsuits related
to the collection of medical information. In October, three new lawsuits
in California courts alleged that LinkedIn violated users’ privacy by collecting information on medical appointment sites, including for a
fertility clinic.
Social media companies’ tracking practices have underpinned the tremendous growth of the tech industry, but few web users are aware of how far the tracking goes. “This absolutely contradicts the expectation of the average consumer,” Geoghegan said.
In California, a law called the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act governs the privacy of medical information in the state.
Under the act, consumers must give permission to some organizations before their medical information is disclosed to third parties. Companies have
faced litigation under the law for using web tracking technologies,
although those suits have not always been successful.
Geoghegan said current protections like these don’t go far enough in
helping consumers protect their sensitive data.
“This is an exact example of why we need better protections,” she said of LinkedIn receiving the data. “This is sensitive health information that consumers expect to be protected and a lack of regulations is failing us.”
CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining
how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters.
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November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump. We look
forward to America being great again.
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.
Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.
Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama
/ Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.
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