Cerebral, a remote mental health startup that gained popularity in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, disclosed this week that it has given the personal information of more than 3.1 million American patients to major tech companies. Social networks and advertising companies, including Google, Meta and Tik Tok, are among the institutions that have received this information. A recent announcement uploaded to Cerebral’s website reveals that the company used a tool called “pixels”. This tool contains tracking scripts from companies such as Meta, which are provided to third parties for advertising purposes and user data collection.
Among the data shared by Cerebral is name, phone number, date of birth and insurance information. In some cases, the Company has used information collected from patients participating in the Mental Health Self-Assessment Program to schedule counseling appointments and access other services. According to Cerebral, social security numbers, bank information or credit card numbers of individuals have not been disclosed.
The company claims it has now “disabled, reconfigured, and/or removed” the tracking tools that exposed users’ data, and has also enhanced its information security procedures and technology review processes to reduce the risk to Reduce the sharing of such information in the future.
The US Federal Trade Commission recently fined drug discount app GoodRx $1.5 million for sharing patient information with Meta and Google.
