Excerpted from New York Times, January 25, 2015<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re concerned about online privacy, you\u2019ve likely read a lot about what happens to the information you enter into sites like Facebook or Google.\u00a0 But now another website is generating privacy worries:\u00a0 Healthcare.gov.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Jack Gillum at The Associated Press report that the health insurance site has been sharing user data \u2013 possibly including characteristics like users\u2019 age and income, as well as whether they\u2019re pregnant \u2013 with companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook.\u00a0 They write that \u201cthere is no evidence that personal information has been misused\u201d, and that the administration says it has prohibited companies \u201cfrom using the data to further their own business interests.\u201d Still, they note, many find the practice troubling.<\/p>\n
According to Dr. Hartzog, a law professor at Samford University who studies privacy says that \u201cwhat government is engaging in here, if indeed they\u2019re sharing anonymized data according to certain kinds of industry standards:, is in fact \u201ccommon practice for lots of different websites, if not most websites,\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cConsumers should be concerned not just because it\u2019s happening at Healthcare.gov but because it\u2019s happening everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n