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Facebook Aimed To Match Patient Data To User Profiles Without Consent--Deanonymized!
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Yes! Even though anonymous "anonymized" data is supposed to be secret, Facebook knows that 90% of it can be reconstructed back to the user. So, what is Facebook going to do... deatomize it and release patient names with their data! Why? Because they can!
A big "FUCK YOU, HIPAA!"
According to a CNBC report, Facebook sent a doctor on a secret mission to ask hospitals to share patient data with them. The company’s aim was to match patient records to Facebook profiles, a potential violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
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We already know from previous studies that the so-called anonymized data that advertising and data-tracking companies like to promote as a way to encourage people to give up their data, isn’t actually that anonymous. In fact, in many of these studies over 90% of the people can be easily identified from the anonymized data.
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To comply with the federal and state medical privacy laws, Facebook planned to use cryptographic hashes to match the medical data set with the Facebook user base, while blurring the names of the patients in the medical data set.
However, the final result of this solution still seems to lead to deanonymization, if at the end of the whole process, the company can still match single users to certain medical data about them. At that point, the data is no longer anonymous, even if it may have been in the early stages of the process.
.
.
We already know from previous studies that the so-called anonymized data that advertising and data-tracking companies like to promote as a way to encourage people to give up their data, isn’t actually that anonymous. In fact, in many of these studies over 90% of the people can be easily identified from the anonymized data.
.
.
To comply with the federal and state medical privacy laws, Facebook planned to use cryptographic hashes to match the medical data set with the Facebook user base, while blurring the names of the patients in the medical data set.
However, the final result of this solution still seems to lead to deanonymization, if at the end of the whole process, the company can still match single users to certain medical data about them. At that point, the data is no longer anonymous, even if it may have been in the early stages of the process.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/facebook-match-patient-data-profiles,36839.html
Just something to sleep on!
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