A few years back there was the case where Target was using mailed ads specific to the profile they'd built for the recipient, and a man went in angry about the pregnancy stuff being advertised to his daughter. He went into the store outraged. Turns out, she actually was pregnant and hadn't yet told her father.
Ever since then, I've been more conscious of my purchasing patterns. I'm sure there are still technological advancements to track cash transactions, but it at least makes it more difficult.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
...though the anonymous mask would work just as well.
Facebook still seems to misunderstand its role as a communications platform funded through adtech and data harvesting. And as a company with 2 billion+ customers ('users' in reality, as their customers are actually advertisers), they need to understand that they have an ethical role to play in using technology (yes, even communications technologies) and need to address their Orwellian bones.
The obligation to maximize shareholder value for companies like Facebook (or legacy AT&T doesn't align with the public interest). You also have companies controlled by small numbers of people with unusual world-views. (Remember when Twitter was bragging about sparking the arab spring?) You need distributed regulatory force to compel behavior, just like how many aspects of electrical rates are governed in the US by state commissions.
I can’t remember the source but I recently read that Facechook has a PR team of 1,100 (WTF?!) and that even The Zuck (™ pending!) has a personal media team of 15-20 making him look like a Saint. Spoilers: outside of HN and many tech sites, it’s working - even in the light of Cambridge Analytica, et al.
The real issue stems from the fact that very few elected Politicians or Technocrats understand technology and its implications, OR, are too fearful to attack the FANGs as they are very powerful, OR are susceptible to soft propaganda efforts; otherwise known as lobbyists.
It’s clear to me at least that an unregulated Facebook is a potential danger in many parts of the world: USA elections, Myanmar, etc. It obviously has great utility too - hence its absolute success - but the days when Google, Apple, Facechook, et al, say they are not media companies are hopefully in the past.
[1] although not under the current FCC regime!
That would be a very serious breach of HIPAA.....and wow turns out I am wrong, after a quick google search, I'm now afraid you may be right- that they did not de-anonymize you but somehow botched a targeted anonymous profile. Absolutely bonkers.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-data-brokers-...
With drugs, physicians are treated like sales representatives by the pharmaceutical companies, who get real-time data from the pharmacies about prescriptions as they are filled. They are assigned quotas based on demographics and "education" or other programs are targeted based on how they prescribe.
I was less successful in learning exactly what information was shared re: the medical treatment, but because my employer administers hospital coverage separately from physician billing, we believe that only hospital related claims were used. The folks who I spoke to theorized that if I used an HMO, the anesthesia would have lowered my wife's "score" for further marketing.
The hospital network is good at not answering questions and I've gotten very little from them over 3 years -- I'm now thinking about lobbying a state legislator(s) about it.
They also have information about the doctors that allows them to tailor the marketing message.
This might be a good place to start learning more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2517975/
My wife had a very early ruptured ectopic pregnancy (which she wasn't aware of), which nearly killed her. On the week that the baby would have been born, Enfamil launched an acquisition campaign targeted at expectant mothers that month, kicked off by a Fedex package containing bottled/powered formula (worth about $60) and including Facebook campaign targeting new mothers.
This was very upsetting to us, so I dug in, found out from the company where they obtained out information, and obtained the list. I spoke to a couple of physician and nurse friends who are pretty confident that it was a combination of the ER admission, an imaging claim, and a drug that was prescribed and filled in the hospital that made it highly likely to an observer that she was pregnant -- but didn't provide enough detail to determine that she left the hospital not pregnant.
It turns out that information regarding hospital admission, insurance claims and prescription fulfillment is available and slurped up by various parties, who are able to de-anonymize it. It contained alot of information, including accurate salary history, cars we owned, approximate credit score, where we bought baby stuff for our previous child, etc.
I make it a point to share this whenever appropriate, as it was a very painful violation of our privacy, and really threw me for a loop, as I couldn't fathom that our medical providers were selling our data to help pitch diapers and formula. Facebook and many other companies either has access to this information by buying lists, or can extrapolate by looking at advertiser patterns.