London - Next time you develop an embarrassing itch or lump, you might want to reconsider turning to health websites for a diagnosis.
A researcher has discovered that a number of major health websites are “leaking” web users’ search terms to third-party advertising and marketing companies.
While there is no evidence that the information obtained is being misused, Professor Marco Huesch said failure to address concerns about his findings might diminish trust in health-related websites.
In theory, he said, the data could make it possible to identify an individual user’s health conditions.
Huesch, of the University of Southern California-Los Angeles and Duke business school, used freely available interception software to monitor 20 health websites. Popular websites used in the research included WebMD, Weight Watchers, Men’s Health and NHS UK. By entering search terms such as “herpes”, “depression” or “cancer”, he discovered that all 20 sites used at least one method to track its users. On average, the sites used six or seven different ways to track their webpage visitors.
A “tracking element” is a long-acting computer script that reports to a third party – such as an marketing company – about a user’s online behaviour on a website.
Heusch found that 13 of the 20 websites contained one or more tracking elements while five of them had also enabled social media button tracking. No tracking elements were found on doctor-oriented sites closely tied to professional groups, however.
“A patient who searches on a ‘free’ health-related website for information related to ‘herpes’ should be able to assume that the inquiry is anonymous,” he said. “If not anonymous, the information knowingly or unknowingly disclosed by the patient should not be divulged to others. Unfortunately, neither assumption may be true.”
The data passed on to third parties could be used with tracking and other information obtained from social media websites to create revealing profiles of individuals.
“In theory, someone could build up a powerful document with all of your medical conditions, the drugs you’re taking, where you work, who your relatives are, where you live, and other personal information,” Huesch said.
He is not entirely against targeted advertising however – a common tactic employed by many sites to allow advertisers to serve up ads based on a user’s browsing history. But, where the industry largely polices itself, it is not ideal.
“There’s a balance to be found there, but right now, we’re too far in one direction,” he said.
Heusch made it clear, however, that he had no evidence that any company was misusing the information or creating the profiles he described. But, he still believes action needs to be taken.
”Failure to address these concerns may diminish trust in health-related websites and reduce the willingness of some people to access health-related information online,” he said. – Daily Mail