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Mental-health information 'sold to advertisers'
- i_am_nomad 7y agoThis kind of thing makes me want to start a small independent ISP that automatically blocks trackers, a la Pi-Hole, unless the customer specifically opts in for them. Though, I’m not sure if there are legal hurdles in the US for doing this.
- akersten 7y agoNet neutrality is gone, block all you want as an ISP!
- techntoke 7y agoThe legal hurdles are billions of dollars spent by corporate ISP conglomerates that have less morals than you do, and unfortunately that makes it more difficult to compete.
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y agoMore like no morals. They only have "morals" when they might get sued, fined or just isn't profitable.
- sjg007 7y agoI mean offer a virtual ISP using VPN. Sell a preconfigured router.
- fredley 7y agoAn ISP won't really cut it these days, since more and more internet use, particularly in developing countries, is mobile. You need to start a small independent mobile carrier.
- jschwartzi 7y agoSomeone needs to call John Legere and get T-Mobile working on this.
- tenebrisalietum 7y agoI was interested in Pi-Hole, but didn't really want to modify my existing DNS setup. I have a server running BIND that has forwarders set to external DNS and has views setup so I can reach servers within my network with the same DNS names as externally. I found this - https://www.pitt-pladdy.com/blog/_20170407-105402_0100_DNS_Firewall_blackhole_malicious_like_Pi-hole_with_bind9/ https://www.pitt-pladdy.com/blog/_20170407-105402_0100_DNS_F... - and it takes the same blocklists Pi-Hole uses and generates BIND RPZ files. It accomplishes the same thing but integrated nicely into my setup. I have it updating weekly. I mention this to say that I would consider using my ISP's DNS servers if they were Pi-Hole RPZ enabled. And since you can use any DNS you want I can't see why that would create legal issues.
- ummonk 7y agoCan't you just offer a DNS service that does that?
- i_am_nomad 7y agoSure, that would be more cost effective, but less user-friendly. Most people don’t even know what DNS is, and it would be a nightmare walking every single customer through their router’s DHCP settings. Plus, if they cancel their subscription to my DNS, now they have to change it back.
- rhcom2 7y agoPersonally, it really sucks to get ads targeted at my mental health diagnoses.
- hello_friendos 7y agoAgree, I don't need a million ads for a useless text therapist app.
- techntoke 7y agoYou obviously need therapy if you don't want the advertisements. /s
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoIs that how you really feel?
- techntoke 7y agoThe /s was supposed to mean sarcasm, however that is probably the direction that companies will try to take the mental health profession.
- a_e_k 7y agoI suspect that GP was riffing on typical responses from a therapist chat-bot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
- perl4ever 7y agoOf course, someone developed a script for a patient too; I think it was called PARRY. Perhaps these could be combined in an adversarial learning setup...
- perl4ever 7y ago
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y agoWhen I read things like this, any quams I have about using ad/tracking blockers melt away.
- cryoshon 7y agothis is exactly why i view surveillance and advertising as attacks on my personal autonomy. advertisers will use anything and everything against me, whether or not i ever consented to anyone knowing or using any of my information. if i'm surveilled, anything i do can be monetized and that monetization directly and seriously harms me and exposes me to risk that i did not opt into. if an advertiser knows that i am mentally ill on the basis of my search queries or other data which they illegitimately procure without my consent and against my active objections, they can target me for exploitation with an arsenal of dirty psychological tricks designed to get me to buy their products. if i am like most people, in the long run, they will win because i will buy at least one product which they have forced onto me. in other words, if i am forced against my will to view a targeted advertisements, it is an inexcusable and unprovoked attack on my right to refrain from economic activity that i do not wish to undertake. it is an attempt at coercion using weaponized persuasion. it is not an attempt in good faith to improve my life or to help me. this remains true whether that advertisement targets an area where people are explicitly exceptionally vulnerable, such as in the case of mental health, or something more mundane, like my love of fast cars and nice wine. however, in the case of mental health, it may be such that the act of targeting someone with a relevant advertisement genuinely makes their condition worse. so, as we all knew all along, these advertisements are actively, maliciously, and viciously harming people for the sake of a few clicks. the bottom line here is that advertisers and advertiser-enablers are long overdue for their comeuppance. i'd support a ban on targeted advertisements, but that won't happen legislatively. GDPR and similar laws are a start, but they don't go nearly far enough to punish transgressors. i'd be more satisfied with criminal liability for advertisements exploiting protected classes of PII, but we'll see how things evolve.
- RL_Quine 7y agoI have a rather specific condition that I’ve seen YouTube advertisements for the drugs for, despite not even searching for the details of it except through an anonymizer. I’ve always wondered what the cost per click for an advertisement for a $100,000/yr drugs is.
- globuous 7y agoThat’s so messed up. What do you think of advertisements for drugs in general? Have they been helpful finding treatment for your condition ? They are illegal where i’m from i believe (i’ve never seen one myself except in the us). Btw, this reminds of this absolutely hilarious story i think i first heard of here on HN: https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/ https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking...
- merpnderp 7y agoI’m betting these advertisements are for healthcare providers.
- RL_Quine 7y agoThere’s basically one treatment, and one only that any specialist would recommend at this point, so it’s effectively moot other than the question of it being covered by whatever healthcare or insurance you can muster up. The alternative and older drugs tend to have some rather horrific side effects (detaching your retinas, making your skin detach in some cases) but are very cheap, nobody would choose them if they had the better option. I’m sort of confused in general what advertising for these sort of drugs actually achieves. It’s not like the patient really has a deciding ability (other than live or die if they can’t afford it), so all it does is act as a constant reminder of how financially screwed you are.
- thfuran 7y agoThere's basically some segment of the population who will demand $SOME_DRUG_THEY_SAW_ADS_FOR and will change doctors repeatedly until they can get a prescription for it, even if there are better alternatives that were recommended by the previous doctors. Eliminating direct advertisement won't completely avoid that since there will always be blogs full of crazy nonsense or whatever, but I don't think there's any reason that consumers should be getting targeted for ads for things they can't even legally buy.
- amelius 7y ago> And many used Hotjar, a company that provides software that allows everything users type or click on to be logged and played back. Er, what?
- tiborsaas 7y agoIt even records the mouse movements, generate hotmaps, etc. You have to do extra efforts to filter out certain input fields, like passwords or credit card details. https://help.hotjar.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012439167-How-to-Manually-Suppress-Specific-Elements-and-Images https://help.hotjar.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012439167-How-t...
- coldcode 7y agoIBM had something like this once, forget the name, something like TeaLeaf. We were forced to use it in our mobile apps until it became obvious it was terribly broken.
- body12 7y agoYes, every mouse movement, unsubmitted form input, scroll, highlight, and so on. This stuff can also be used to fingerprint you. LiveSession, Inspectlet, UXCam are competitors. uBlock Origin on Firefox can be configured to block these.
- jschwartzi 7y agoI was on the fence about installing an ad blocker until this.
- pimterry 7y agoOne of the team behind this research posted an interesting walk-through of the traffic from one of the worst offenders: https://twitter.com/Bendineliot/status/1169259912184115206 https://twitter.com/Bendineliot/status/1169259912184115206
- maxk42 7y agoAs much as I value privacy and think America needs a new constitutional amendment enshrining it in our rights, this title is clickbait and the entire article is designed to whip you into a panic. Here's the crux: "Privacy International (PI) investigated more than 100 mental health websites in France, Germany and the UK. It found many shared user data with third parties, including advertisers and large technology companies." Yes. Mental health websites use third-party ads just like everyone else. Case closed. They're not "selling mental-health information" as if they're violating HIPAA or something. They're just ordinary websites with ads and other tracking cookies. This is more of the silly kind of half-truths that were used to put cookie warnings on nearly every site on the internet. Don't fall for it.
- __m 7y agoCompanies come first in the US, in politics and individual rights
- maxk42 7y agoThat's not remotely true and has nothing to do with my point.
- meesles 7y agoYou're right about it having nothing to do with your point, but GP is correct. Simple example: Californians can't get pre-filled tax forms because the program to provide that service was lobbied against by tax firms. There are tons of example of oil and gas lobbies against environmental concerns, food/beverage lobbies against public health, the list goes on. In the USA, large companies will get their way most of the time at the expense of the public. Every once in a while, the government realizes an issue and puts in some regulations. Rinse and repeat.
- pkaye 7y ago> Californians can't get pre-filled tax forms because the program to provide that service was lobbied against by tax firms. Do you have information on this? From what I heard California cancelled it after implementing because there was not sufficient use. I think its less lobbying and more that people sticking with what they are familiar with... Turbo Tax or an accountant.
- somesortofsystm 7y agoMental Health is big business. It should come as no surprise that the weakest of the species will be preyed upon by the sickest.
- seamyb88 7y agoShow HN: A boat for servers to keep your tech company on international waters post-digital civil rights.
- zawerf 7y agoMicrosoft has an actual underwater data center for energy efficiency purposes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17244525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17244525
- jetrink 7y agoPatent US7525207B2 - Water-based data center (Google LLC) https://patents.google.com/patent/US7525207B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US7525207B2/en Google's [...] floating data centers off US coasts (2013) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/30/google-secret-floating-data-centers-california-maine https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/30/google-se...
- colpabar 7y agoJesus, imagine Google's data handling practices in international waters.
- bduerst 7y agoWhy waste money on floating the servers when you can sink them? Microsoft is already piloting it: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44368813 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44368813
- uoaei 7y agoPassive cooling with no rent costs is hard to beat. Just gotta get to the bottom of the ocean first.
- inlined 7y agoNever heard of one being implemented. Maybe that’s because you can’t store a googol in a floating point? I’ll see myself out.
- mediathrowaway 7y agoI worked for a major DSP / advertising platform and I was asked to setup a campaign to advertise some particular drug to bi-polar people in a manner that would specifically target that population. I declined to do so and I was later fired. They were within their rights to fire me and I was within my rights to decline. That is all.
- Spooky23 7y agoCompanies have practices for opioid abuse surveillance and prevention that highlight how available this data is. Example https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/public-sector/solutions/solving-the-countrys-opioid-crisis.html https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/public-sector/solution... They use insurer datasets to model at-risk populations, especially populations with high costs, to identify intervention opportunities. I saw one model where they could identify all pregnant women in a state with 98% accuracy and score them for risk of opioid dependency. You can layer that type of data with online advertising from vendors like Google and identify opportunities to target behavior factors that combined with medical risk factors present opportunities. For example, a blue collar worker with back pain treated opioid treatment has a baseline risk of abuse. If her address changes or behaviors like online gambling happen, that increases the risk of abuse. Similar tech has been developed to combat extremist behavior. http://chicagopolicyreview.org/2019/04/18/can-online-ads-help-prevent-violent-extremism/ http://chicagopolicyreview.org/2019/04/18/can-online-ads-hel... In short, your health data is not meaningfully private.
- hnfmelsl 7y agoThe real “social credit system”
- body12 7y agoWe need to start thinking ahead about who is going to run the federal agencies and "tobacco truth" type organizations funded by the billions of damages from the inevitable settlements, to avoid regulatory capture.
- dangrover 7y agoI can't separate what actually happened from the sensationalizing in the article. It says the websites had Google cookies and others. OK, anybody using Google Analytics has Google cookies. Anyone using FB plugins has FB cookies. Yes, websites certainly have a lot of cookies these days, and the information inferred by use of these can be in a generic fashion to target and rank ads. That's worthy of scrutiny -- but this isn't what the article is about. What is the evidence of "mental health" being treated in some scary specific way? The only substantial thing in the article supporting the headline is one charge that a site sent quiz answers to Player.qualifo.com -- which appears to be an unregistered domain. OK, so what information was sold? When did money change hands? Is there any hard evidence that mental health information was "sold to advertisers", as is claimed in the headline? Or is this just bullshit they made up to get clicks? For that matter, even if you wanted to do some evil psychographic ad thing, why would anyone sell that info to advertisers? What are they gonna do with it? Like, why hand them the literal data, when you could allow them to just bid on ads that may be targeted/ranked using your painstakingly collected psychographic data (a la Cambridge Analytica)? Why sell cow when you can sell the milk? The fearmongering and disinformation around adtech and privacy numbs us to legitimately scary things being done that should be covered more. Makes me think of this Blake Ross rant: https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-outsource-your-thinking-ad825a9b4653 https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-outsource-your-thinking-...
- SomeOldThrow 7y agoA greater problem is the divorce of collection of data and consent.
- umvi 7y agoThat's because not everyone agrees that observational data is something that can (or should) be owned by a person. When a human looks at another person, are they "collecting data without consent"? Most would say no. So at what point do you "own" observational data about yourself? When it's observed by a machine? So then CCTV should be illegal too then, and indeed any sort of security system that records audio/video without consent.
- SCAQTony 7y agoThe question that should be asked is what technology companies bought that information and was that info sold to human resources departments?
- droithomme 7y agoAlways use a VPN and incognito mode when accessing any sites for which your interest has value to others that could harm you. It's not surprising at all that web sites covering medical issues are also tracking interest in those issues, correlating them with identities, and selling them to third parties, perhaps including life and health insurance companies, potential employers, etc.
- florinutz 7y agoif these titles were more like Advertisers buy mental-health information the accent would fall more on the problem
- jimbob45 7y agoOh awesome. So does that mean we can finally do away with the gigantic money sink that is HIPAA? Because if we're gonna have our health information leaked, then there's no reason to keep up this charade.
- djsumdog 7y agoI get the feeling these are just general websites with mental health information, articles and little tests, but not actual health providers. If it's just a directory and not your health insurance company or doctor, they don't fall under HIPAA. HIPAA only applies to the US. EU laws and the GDPR, which this article are discussing, are very different.
- inflatableDodo 7y agoUnfortunately, if you have the clout and money and a facile excuse, you can also get data on patients straight from the NHS itself. 'Revealed: Google AI has access to huge haul of NHS patient data' - https://www.newscientist.com/article/2086454-revealed-google-ai-has-access-to-huge-haul-of-nhs-patient-data/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2086454-revealed-google... 'Data deadlines loom large for the NHS' - https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1215 https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1215