Popular health websites in UK are sharing sensitive user data with dozens of companies including Google and Facebook along with data-brokers and adtech firms
This is a repeat finding, not a first: [[a:826701|a 2015 investigation already showed most health sites routing medical-search data to third parties]], and the FT's reporting four years later indicates the practice persisted at scale across dozens of recipients including Google, Facebook, data brokers and adtech firms.
The story sits at the start of an arc that later widened from commercial tracking to institutional data-sharing: England's NHS move to pool medical histories of 55M patients for third-party access and [[a:846191|Biobank's disclosure that it shared volunteer health data with insurers despite pledging not to]] both extended the same underlying question — who controls sensitive UK health data once it leaves its original context.
First-order effects
Google, Facebook and the named data brokers and adtech firms are receiving health-related browsing data from popular UK sites, giving them raw material for inferring users' medical conditions without those users' explicit awareness.
Second-order effects
UK health publishers face pressure to overhaul consent and tracker practices, while advertisers buying against health audiences must weigh reputational and compliance risk attached to data sourced this way.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds — website tracking, then NHS-scale pooling, then research-database leakage to insurers — UK health data governance becomes a sustained regulatory battleground, with opt-out mechanisms and enforcement rather than site-level promises carrying the burden of protection.
The trend: Sensitive health data in the UK is migrating from individual website trackers toward pooled institutional datasets, with each disclosure pushing regulators closer to systemic rules on secondary use.
An FT investigation has shown that people's most sensitive health data, including their medical symptoms, diagnoses and period and fertility information, are being traded with dozens of companies around the world, including Google, Amazon and Facebook https://www.ft.com/... https…
How top health websites are sharing sensitive data with advertisers. Bravo to the FT for this extraordinary reporting. https://giftarticle.ft.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Developers aren't taught about eprivacy law. They should be. Clients don't stipulate privacy compliance in deliverables. They should do. https://twitter.com/...
Ugh. Ever checked out your symptoms? Fertility? Asked questions about abortion? The toxic data swamp now has them. And knows exactly you are. The ramifications of this are huge. Important new data investigation from @ft https://www.ft.com/...
No one should have the right to ‘own’ or sell your data, but here we are, you've given it away for free. Perhaps we should copy the music industry, so every time someone accesses your data you're paid a royalty. https://twitter.com/...
When people search “drug overdose” on WebMD, the site secretly shares the data w/Facebook, which can use it to track the searcher around the internet. One of many big revelations in this @FT investigation into how ad tech works on medical websites: https://www.ft.com/...
Being online is like having someone behind you all the time, writing down every single thing you say and do to sell that to whoever is willing to pay. Would the unvirtual equivalent be deemed acceptable? https://twitter.com/...