More Suicide Resource Orgs Found To Be Monetizing Sensitive User Data
from the monetize-ALL-the-things! dept
Last February, a report in Politico found that Crisis Text Line, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit support options for the suicidal, had been monetizing user data. More specifically, the nonprofit was collecting all sorts of data on “customer interactions” (ranging from the frequency certain words are used, to the type of distress users are experiencing), then sharing that data with their for profit partner.
That partner then made money by selling that data to data brokers. This was ok, the companies claimed, because the data collected was “anonymized,” a term that study after study after study have shown means nothing and doesn’t actually protect your data.
Now The Markup has another report showing how websites for mental health crisis resources across the country routinely collect sensitive user data and share it with Facebook. More specifically, their websites contain the “Meta Pixel,” which can collect data including names, user ID numbers, email addresses, and browsing habits to the social media giant:
The Markup tested 186 local crisis center websites under the umbrella of the national 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Calls to the national 988 line are routed to these centers based on the area code of the caller. The organizations often also operate their own crisis lines and provide other social services to their communities.
The Markup’s testing revealed that more than 30 crisis center websites employed the Meta Pixel, formerly called the Facebook Pixel. The pixel, a short snippet of code included on a webpage that enables advertising on Facebook, is a free and widely used tool. A 2020 Markup investigation found that 30 percent of the web’s most popular sites use it.
We recently noted how many of the States that have been freaking out about TikTok also have tech embedded in their websites that share all kinds of sensitive data with data brokers or companies like Facebook. Often they’re just using websites developed by third parties using templates, and aren’t fully aware that their website is even doing this. Other times they know and just don’t care.
But it’s a continued example of the kind of stuff that simply wouldn’t be as common if we had even a basic national privacy law for the internet era. One that required just the slightest bit of due diligence, especially for nonprofits and companies that operate in particularly sensitive arenas.
But for decades the U.S. government, at the direct behest of numerous industries, prioritized making money over human safety, brand trust, or even marketplace health. And we keep paying for it in direct and indirect ways alike with scandals that will only get worse now that issues like the authoritarian assault on women’s reproductive healthcare has come squarely into frame.
Filed Under: data brokers, meta pixel, privacy, security, suicide, suicide hotline
Companies: meta
Comments on “More Suicide Resource Orgs Found To Be Monetizing Sensitive User Data”
Frankly, it gives me a headache to imagine just what targeted ads you’d want to send suicidal people.
You probably need to be gutless in order not to have it wrehcned by modern business practices.
Re:
This kind of personal info can be/is used for more purposes than just advertising.
For example, just off the top of my head: insurance policy/claim evaluation, job application screening, loan applications… maybe even for anti-abortion bounty bunting, if Texas gets its way.
non-profits are a great way to make money.
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NP exec 1: Woah – we’re predicted to have income > expenditure, but we’re a non profit. What do we do?
NP exec 2: increase the expenses by giving ourselves a bonus until the books balance of course.
My concern would be
If you had that much of a rough patch in your life and then these scumbags sell your data to an Insurance company and it becomes nigh impossible to get coverage. That would also likely be some kind of Hippa violation.
Re:
“Sure, your husband’s death certificate states he died from terminal cancer, but we have it on good authority that his pain meds were not working and he was desperate, so you’ll understand that we’ll refuse paying out the life insurance unless you have him exhumed and autopsied and prove that there are no dangerous levels of opiates involved.”
Re: Re:
Sadly, that is already standard procedure in some instances. During COVID, a small number of accidental indemnity claims were denied unless there was a negative COVID test. The “logic” was if they were infected, they died of an accident precipitated due to illness, thus were not covered for enhanced accidental indemnity. In no few cases, they tried to escape any indemnity at all. Or so I’m given to understand. All I was supposed to do was pull the data from the servers, not analyze the case. I didn’t look at the data past ensuring it was what I was assigned to get though. None of my business, what I don’t know I can’t even talk about it in my sleep.
Not enough to make Congress do anything still.
I look forward to someone building a browser addon that alerts you when a site has the web bugs like this, because there is no way in hell any of the sites using it are going to check for themselves so they can pretend they never knew.
IRS data, People seeking help… yeah nothing Congress gives a shit about.
Re:
EFF’s Privacy badger alerts you and blocks those trackers.
https://privacybadger.org/
The question isn't 'will this kill people?' but 'how many?'
If ever there was a good reason for politicians to go nuclear about user privacy this would be it because monetizing suicide prevention services is something that will result in deaths as people who might have reached out for help refuse to do so because they (rightly) can’t trust the people they’re being asked to contact.
If the hyperventilation over ‘Big Tech is collecting all your data, they must be stopped!’ was actually about protecting the public then those same politicians would be jumping on this gross violation of trust in order to crack down on it, but since that would require going after data collectors and sellers that aren’t major tech companies I expect it will be largely ignored even as politicians continue to froth at the mouth about how terrible the likes of Google/Meta are.