A new Senate bill aims to expand protections for Americans’ health and location data. It’s that such information could be used to identify people seeking reproductive health services after the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion last year.
He seeks to prevent companies from selling personally identifiable health data for advertising purposes and prohibit data brokers from buying and selling precise location data. In addition, the proposed legislation would give consumers more access and ownership of their health data. It would also place more restrictions on the use of personal health data by companies without a user’s explicit consent.
The bill aims to prohibit the use of personally identifiable health data from any source for advertising. This includes data from the users themselves, medical centers, fitness trackers, and browsing histories. The restrictions of the UPHOLD Privacy Act would not apply to public health campaigns.
The legislation was introduced by Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren and Mazie Hirono. “With Republicans working to ban and criminalize reproductive health care across the country, it is critical that we protect the privacy of reproductive data for everyone in our country,” Hirono said. in a sentence. “Everyone should be able to trust that personal data about their bodies and their healthcare will be protected. By restricting the sale and use of personally identifiable health data, this bill will give patients and providers the peace of mind that their private information is secure.”
Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade last June, lawmakers have towards the protection of consumer health data. Period tracking apps have given particular cause for concern. Since then, the developers of some of these apps have policies to help protect their users’ data.
The Federal Trade Commission said shortly after the Supreme Court ruling that it would clamp down on companies that misuse health and location data. This week, online advice service agency BetterHelp to share consumer health data for ad targeting without consent. The FTC found that the company shared users’ email addresses, IP addresses, and health questionnaire responses. BetterHelp says it has never shared clinical data from therapy sessions with advertisers, publishers or social media companies.
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