Class Action Says Scripps Health Secretly Shares Website Visitors’ Data with Facebook, Google

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Scripps Health faces a proposed class action over its alleged disclosure of website visitors’ private information to third parties, including Facebook and Google, without consent.

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The 71-page lawsuit accuses the San Diego-based healthcare network of “intentionally” embedding into Scripps.org invisible tracking tools that capture and share users’ personal and medical data with unauthorized third parties, which then use the information for targeted marketing.

Per the suit, the tracking technologies—which include Facebook’s Meta pixel and Google Analytics—are used to record a consumer’s every interaction on a website in real time, such as the buttons they click, their search queries and the URLs of any pages they visit.

By installing these web-tracking tools on Scripps.org, the defendant has “essentially plant[ed] a bug on patients’ web browsers that forced them to disclose private and confidential communications to third parties,” the case claims. The complaint alleges that Scripps Health’s conduct has violated not only its own privacy policy and state and federal law, but patients’ protected privacy rights to boot.

According to the filing, patients can use Scripps.org to book appointments, search for physicians, research treatment options, communicate with providers and more. However, unbeknownst to users, the tracking tools embedded on the website allow third parties to “listen in” and collect visitors’ confidential data, including their status as patients, health conditions, desired medical treatments and the location and specialty of their doctors, the lawsuit contends.

In addition, the suit claims that the tracking software captures visitors’ Facebook IDs—identifiers uniquely associated with individual Facebook accounts—thereby supplying unauthorized third parties with enough information to link specific users to their interactions on Scripps.org.

The case argues that Scripps Health utilized and benefitted from the web-tracking tools on its website despite explicit warnings from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

“HHS and the FTC have recently issued a warning letter directly to [Scripps Health] informing it that its use of online Tracking Tools presents serious privacy and security risks, and that [the defendant] is impermissibly disclosing consumers’ sensitive personal health information to third parties,” the complaint relays.

As the filing tells it, Scripps Health never obtained consent from users to disclose their personal information, nor did it inform them of the full scope of its data-sharing practices.

“Healthcare patients simply do not anticipate or expect that their trusted healthcare provider will send personally identifying health information or confidential medical information collected via its webpages to a hidden third party—let alone Facebook, which has a sordid history of privacy violations in pursuit of ever-increasing advertising revenue—without the patients’ consent,” the case charges. “Neither Plaintiffs nor any other Class Members signed a written authorization permitting [Scripps Health] to send their Private Information to Facebook.”

The lawsuit looks to represent any California resident who used Scripps.org and was a Scripps Health patient during the applicable statute of limitations period.

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