Most Health-Related Websites Share Personal Info With Third-Parties

Third parties receive personal health information from more than 90% of visits to health-related websites, according to research to be published in the March 2015 issue of Communication of the ACM.

Third parties receive personal health information from more than 90% of visits to health-related websites, according to research to be published in the March 2015 issue of Communication of the ACM.

For the study, Timothy Libert, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, examined the top 50 search results for close to 2000 common diseases, which resulted in slightly more than 80,000 unique pages. Researchers found third-party HTTP requests in 91% of those pages.