US healthcare marketplaces shared citizenship and race data with ad tech giants

Almost all of the 20 U.S. state government-run health insurance marketplaces shared residents’ application information with advertising and tech giants, including Google, LinkedIn, Meta, and Snap, according to a new investigation by Bloomberg.

The report drives home the privacy problems created by pixel-sized trackers, which allow website owners to collect information about their visitors, often for web analytics and identifying bugs. A common tool in digital advertising, these trackers also allow the collection of personal information if misconfigured and placed on websites that contain sensitive content, such as healthcare data.