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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Financial Disclosure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Financial Disclosure. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

FTC to Ban BetterHelp from Revealing Consumers’ Data, Including Sensitive Mental Health Information, to Facebook and Others for Targeted Advertising

Federal Trade Commission
Press Release
Originally released 2 MAR 23

The Federal Trade Commission has issued a proposed order banning online counseling service BetterHelp, Inc. from sharing consumers’ health data, including sensitive information about mental health challenges, for advertising. The proposed order also requires the company to pay $7.8 million to consumers to settle charges that it revealed consumers’ sensitive data with third parties such as Facebook and Snapchat for advertising after promising to keep such data private.

This is the first Commission action returning funds to consumers whose health data was compromised. In addition, the FTC’s proposed order will ban BetterHelp from sharing consumers’ personal information with certain third parties for re-targeting—the targeting of advertisements to consumers who previously had visited BetterHelp’s website or used its app, including those who had not signed up for the company’s counseling service. The proposed order also will limit the ways in which BetterHelp can share consumer data going forward.

"When a person struggling with mental health issues reaches out for help, they do so in a moment of vulnerability and with an expectation that professional counseling services will protect their privacy,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "Instead, BetterHelp betrayed consumers’ most personal health information for profit. Let this proposed order be a stout reminder that the FTC will prioritize defending Americans’ sensitive data from illegal exploitation."

California-based BetterHelp offers online counseling services under several names, including BetterHelp Counseling. It also markets services aimed at specific groups such as Faithful Counseling focused on Christians, Teen Counseling, which caters to teens and requires parental consent, and Pride Counseling, which is targeted to the LGBTQ community. Consumers interested in BetterHelp’s services must fill out a questionnaire that asks for sensitive mental health information—such as whether they have experienced depression or suicidal thoughts and are on any medications. They also provide their name, email address, birth date and other personal information. Consumers are then matched with a counselor and pay between $60 and $90 per week for counseling.

At several points in the signup process, BetterHelp promised consumers that it would not use or disclose their personal health data except for limited purposes, such as to provide counseling services. Despite these promises, BetterHelp used and revealed consumers’ email addresses, IP addresses, and health questionnaire information to Facebook, Snapchat, Criteo, and Pinterest for advertising purposes, according to the FTC’s complaint. 

For example, the company used consumers’ email addresses and the fact that they had previously been in therapy to instruct Facebook to identify similar consumers and target them with advertisements for BetterHelp’s counseling service, which helped the company bring in tens of thousands of new paying users and millions of dollars in revenue.

According to the complaint, BetterHelp pushed consumers to hand over their health information by repeatedly showing them privacy misrepresentations and nudging them with unavoidable prompts to sign up for its counseling service. Despite collecting such sensitive information, BetterHelp failed to maintain sufficient policies or procedures to protect it and did not obtain consumers’ affirmative express consent before disclosing their health data. BetterHelp also failed to place any limits on how third parties could use consumers’ health information—allowing Facebook and other third parties to use that information for their own internal purposes, including for research and development or to improve advertising.

Friday, August 16, 2019

Federal Watchdog Reports EPA Ignored Ethics Rules

Alyssa Danigelis
www.environmentalleader.com
Originally published July 17, 2019

The Environmental Protection Agency failed to comply with federal ethics rules for appointing advisory committee members, the General Accounting Office concluded this week. President Trump’s EPA skipped disclosure requirements for new committee members last year, according to the federal watchdog.

Led by Andrew Wheeler, the EPA currently manages 22 committees that advise the agency on a wide range of issues, including developing regulations and managing research programs.

However, in fiscal year 2018, the agency didn’t follow a key step in its process for appointing 20 committee members to the Science Advisory Board (SAB) and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), the report says.

“SAB is the agency’s largest committee and CASAC is responsible for, among other things, reviewing national ambient air-quality standards,” the report noted. “In addition, when reviewing the step in EPA’s appointment process related specifically to financial disclosure reporting, we found that EPA did not consistently ensure that [special government employees] appointed to advisory committees met federal financial disclosure requirements.”

The GAO also pointed out that the number of committee members affiliated with academic institutions shrank.

The info is here.

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's Hollywood ties spark ethics questions in China trade talks

Emma Newburger
CNBC.com
Originally posted March 15, 2019

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, one of President Donald Trump's key negotiators in the U.S.-China trade talks, has pushed Beijing to grant the American film industry greater access to its markets.

But now, Mnuchin’s ties to Hollywood are raising ethical questions about his role in those negotiations. Mnuchin had been a producer in a raft of successful films prior to joining the Trump administration.

In 2017, he divested his stake in a film production company after joining the White House. But he sold that position to his wife, filmmaker and actress Louise Linton, for between $1 million and $2 million, The New York Times reported on Thursday. At the time, she was his fiancée.

That company, StormChaser Partners, helped produce the mega-hit movie “Wonder Woman,” which grossed $90 million in China, according to the Times. Yet, because of China’s restrictions on foreign films, the producers received a small portion of that money. Mnuchin has been personally engaged in trying to ease those rules, which could be a boon to the industry, according to the Times.

The info is here.