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Cerebral, a telehealth startup that became increasingly popular during the early stages of the pandemic when mental health was fragile globally, has recently revealed that it inadvertently shared the personal information of over 3.1 million patients in the United States with social media giants, Google, Meta, and TikTok. It was revealed that the company had been using tracking scripts, known as “pixels,” which were offered by Meta to third-party developers for advertising since it got off the ground in the month of October 2019.

Cerebral

After reviewing its software, Cerebral discovered that it had disclosed certain information that may be regulated as protected health information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This information includes patients’ names, phone numbers, birth dates, and insurance information. The company may have also exposed information collected through mental health self-assessments completed by patients to schedule counselling appointments. However, it is noteworthy that no social security numbers, bank information, or credit card numbers were shared by the company in the process, as stated by Cerebral. 

Upon discovering the mishap, Cerebral moved swiftly to disable, reconfigure, and remove the tracking pixels that were responsible for exposing the data. The company has also bolstered its information security practices and technology vetting procedures to minimize the risk of similar incidents occurring in the future. The US Department of Health and Human Services is currently investigating the matter, which follows the Federal Trade Commission’s $1.5 million fine against GoodRx for sharing patient data with Meta and Google. Moreover, the agency announced earlier this month that it had reached a $7.8 million settlement with online counselling firm BetterHelp and was seeking to prohibit the company from sharing health information for ad targeting purposes.

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