California Faces Probe After Sharing People's Health Data With LinkedIn
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
California's handling of sensitive health information is under scrutiny following a report that data entered by residents on the state's health insurance marketplace was shared with LinkedIn.
Covered California, which runs the state's marketplace, coveredca.com, shared sensitive personal data with LinkedIn, a subsidiary of Microsoft, through embedded tracking tools on the website, nonprofit news organization The Markup reported on Monday.
Covered California confirmed the data transmission in a news release later that day, saying "some sensitive data was inadvertently collected by the tags, including first names, the last four digits of Social Security numbers, and other sensitive health information like pregnancy status."
It added that all advertising-related tags on the website had been turned off as a "precautionary measure," and that it would review the extent of the data shared.
Representative Kevin Kiley, the Democrat from California has called for an investigation. "This is incredibly disturbing," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Newsweek contacted Representative Kiley via social media and email, as well as the press offices of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and California Governor Gavin Newsom via email outside of regular working hours on Wednesday.
Why It Matters
Concerns over personal data have grown in recent months after it emerged the government's Department of Government Efficiencyworked to gain access to the Social Security Administration's data systems, which hold sensitive personal data about approximately 70 million Americans.
California's sharing of sensitive data with LinkedIn will likely raise similar concerns about threats to Americans' privacy.
File photo: the LinkedIn homepage.
File photo: the LinkedIn homepage.
Chris Radburn/Press Association via AP
What To Know
Trackers on coveredca.com, which was created under the Affordable Care Act, captured users' answers to questions about blindness, pregnancy, high prescription use, gender identity and experiences with domestic abuse, The Markup reported.
The data was then transmitted to LinkedIn using Insight Tag, which uses code to track how visitors interact with websites.
Covered California said in a statement that it "leverages LinkedIn's advertising platform tools to understand consumer behavior;" however, LinkedIn notes on its website that Insight Tag "should not be installed on web pages that collect or contain Sensitive Data."
The LinkedIn campaign trackers began in February 2024 and were removed "due to a marketing agency transition" in early April, Covered California told CalMatters.
Covered California had more than 60 trackers on its site, compared to the average on other government sites of three, CalMatters reported.
What People Are Saying
Covered California said in a news release on Monday: "Covered California is reviewing its entire website and information security and privacy protocols to ensure that no analytics tools are impermissibly collecting or sharing sensitive consumer information. The LinkedIn Insight tags are no longer active and, as a precautionary measure, all active advertising-related tags across the CoveredCA.com website have been turned off.
"Covered California is committed to safeguarding the confidential information and privacy of its consumers. The organization will share additional findings from this investigation as they become available."
California Representative Kevin Kiley, wrote on X: "California's Obamacare website tracked users' personal health information—such as pregnancy and prescription drug use—and sent it to LinkedIn for a 'marketing campaign.' We are asking Secretary Kennedy to investigate for HIPAA violations."
What Happens Next
The Department of Health and Human Services has yet to respond publicly to Kiley's call for an investigation.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
22 minutes ago
- The Hill
Johnson brushes off Musk campaign spending threats: ‘It doesn't concern me'
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in an interview Friday brushed off Elon Musk's campaign spending threats in light of the tech billionaire's public fallout with President Trump, suggesting he isn't worried. The spat between Trump and Musk began with the latter's criticism of the president's legislative agenda making its way through Congress. Johnson said he built a closer relationship with the then-special government employee and that the tech mogul has been led astray regarding the 'big beautiful' spending package. 'Look, it doesn't concern me. We're going to win either way because we're going to win on our policies we're delivering for hardworking Americans and fulfilling those promises,' Johnson told Fox News's 'Jesse Watters Primetime.' 'But look, I like Elon and respect him. I mean, we became friends in all this process,' he continued. 'I've been texting with him even this week … in trying to make sure that he has accurate information about the bill. I think he has been misled about it.' Musk, who contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to assist in Trump's win in the 2024 presidential election, was the biggest donor during the White House race. Amid his recent spat with Trump, which broke out in public as the two traded insults and threats, Musk argued that without his political expenditures, Trump would have lost to former Vice President Harris, Republicans would lose the majority in the House and the GOP would have failed to flip the majority in the Senate. Trump then threatened to have all federal contracts associated with the billionaire's companies to be cut off. As the fight between the two intensified, the tech executive floated the idea of forming a third party and accused the president of being named in the late Jeffrey Epstein's files. Trump has denied close ties to the disgraced financier. Musk's opposition to the GOP megabill — which he called a 'disgusting abomination' — is largely tied to deficit spending. The billionaire argued the legislation would balloon the national debt and fails to slash enough spending. The package faces an uphill battle in the Senate. While Musk, who recently left his position as the top adviser to Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), seemed open to repairing ties on Friday, the president appeared to be OK with moving on. Johnson in the interview Friday defended the spending bill and commended Trump for his handling of the squabble. 'We're going to make good on this… I like the president's attitude. You know, he is moving on. He has to,' he told the host. 'He's laser-focused on delivering for the people. And House and Senate Republicans are as well. So, we've got our hand at the wheel.' 'We're going to get this done just like we told the people,' the Speaker continued. 'And if you are a hardworking American that is struggling to take care of your family, you are going to love this legislation.' The Louisiana Republican added, 'I'm telling you, all boats are going to rise and everybody's going to be in a much better mood before we go into that midterm election in 2026.'
New York Post
32 minutes ago
- New York Post
Au revoir Pornhub! Adult site pulls out of France, sending users into a frenzy
Adult media giant Pornhub said au revoir to France Wednesday after fighting with its government over new age verification rules — sending the country of love into a frenzy. The law now requires users to upload a photo ID to access adult websites, instead of just clicking on a button that says they're 18. Critics argued there are less invasive ways to keep children out of porn. Advertisement 5 This is the image French visitors to Pornhub see since Wednesday. Obtained by the New York Post So in place of videos of porn, French users who visit Pornhub are now greeted by a topless Marianne — the symbolic representation of the republic's ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity — and the phrase 'freedom doesn't have an off button.' And Frenchies are losing it. Advertisement 'Another attack on freedom. What's next?' raged Loire Valley resident Enguerran Richy on social media. 'And then we give lessons in democracy to other countries,' snarked Paris resident Maxime Fontanier. The famously libertine French were the second biggest Pornhub consumers last year – trailing only the US. 5 Many in France think the government is overreaching. Jack Forbes / NY Post Design Advertisement French President Emmanual Macron — who notoriously had an affair with his wife Brigitte when he was a 15-year-old schoolboy and she was his much older, married drama teacher — had been pushing hard for the law, arguing French boys get into porn at a young age. More than half of France's 12-year-old boys visit porn sites, according to an investigation released Tuesday by the country's regulatory authority for audiovisual and digital communications. Eva Hicks, who goes by the screen name Little Angel and was the top porn star on the site in France in 2024, says the move will just push adult content creators to post X-rated videos on social media instead. 5 Macron, who met now wife Brigitte when he was a 15-year-old schoolboy, was a big proponent of banning porn for minors. AFP via Getty Images Advertisement 'These are platforms accessible to minors, which is precisely the problem our government was trying to solve,' Hicks told The Post. 'There's a clear contradiction here.' 'Removing access to specialized platforms actually encourages the trivialization of pornography on mainstream social media.' 5 Hicks, known as Little Angel, was the top porn star on Pornhub in France in 2024. Little Angel/ Instagram Others found a fairly easy workaround. 'A VPN app and it'll be like they peed in the wind,' said Toulouse's Julien Carlot-Meunier. And he was right — it took a mere 30 minutes after Pornhub blocked access for one of the leading VPN providers to see sign-ups jump an astronomical 1,000%. 'This is more than when TikTok blocked Americans,' Proton VPN posted on X. The Canadian-owned porn conglomerate blasted the new government regulations as 'unreasonable, disproportionate and ineffective.' Advertisement 5 Hicks said the ban will just push many adult content creators to post on social media instead. Little Angel/ Instagram 'We built Proton VPN to help people in authoritarian countries with online censorship, an access gateway for porn was obviously not what we had in mind, but VPN can be used in this way,' a Proton spokesperson admitted to The Post. Meanwhile, French authorities — who engaged in a fiery exchange with Pornhub all week — were thrilled. 'Good riddance!' fumed French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot. Advertisement 'Less violent, degrading, and humiliating content accessible to minors in France. Goodbye!' ranted Equality Minister Aurore Bergé. The most searched term on the platform had been 'française' — the feminine version of the word French — meaning users were mostly interested in watching their own countrywomen in action. 'MILF,' 'mature woman' and 'woman with glasses' were also popular searches.
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Breaking down 20 years of election data that shows how the two parties have evolved in the Trump era
President Donald Trump's second election win was different from his first in one big, important way: He won the popular vote, just the second time in the last two decades that Republicans had done so. And in the time between those two victories, from 2004 to 2024, there have been dramatic shifts in the nation's politics along geographic, racial, educational and economic lines. Trump is operating in a very different Republican Party than George W. Bush was 20 years earlier. A look at where the vote has shifted most in that time tells an eye-catching story. Over the last 20 years, the counties where Republicans have improved their presidential vote share by the largest margins are predominately centered in Appalachia and the surrounding areas. The 100 counties that saw the largest shifts include: 11 of West Virginia's 55 counties, 27 of Tennessee's 95 counties, 18 of Arkansas' 75 counties and 17 of Kentucky's 120 counties. These counties, on the whole, are much more heavily white than average, according to census data, with white residents making up at least 90% of the total population in about two-thirds of these counties. All but 12 of those counties are at least 75% white. The unemployment rate across these counties is about twice the national average. Residents are more likely to be reliant on food stamps and less likely to have moved in the last year. Residents of these counties, on average, also are significantly less likely to have a bachelor's degree or higher. While the national average in the American Community Survey's most recent five-year estimate is that 35% of Americans have a bachelor's degree or higher, the average in these counties is just 14%. In short, the shifts show how Trump has brought more white working-class voters into the GOP, causing spectacular changes in some localities. Elliott County, Kentucky, with about 7,300 people, shifted the most over this time period. While Democrat John Kerry carried the county over Bush 70%-29%, the county shifted significantly to the right by Democrat Barack Obama's 2012 re-election, when Obama narrowly outran Republican Mitt Romney 49%-47%. The county continued to shift with Trump on the ballot, ultimately with Trump winning a higher vote share in 2024 (80%) than Kerry did in 2004. It's a similar story in many of these other counties — particularly those in states like West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, where rural voters that once voted Democratic have been leaving the party, especially at the presidential level. A different look — at the counties with the largest pro-Republican shifts between Trump's three elections, from 2016 to 2024 — shows some major differences in the types of places that have moved to the right specifically within the Trump era. On average, the 100 counties that shifted most toward Republicans in the Trump era are significantly more Hispanic than the national average. These counties are also wealthier and more educated compared to the counties that moved most from 2004 to 2024, although they are still below the national average. While the biggest Republican-shifting counties from 2004 to 2024 are largely concentrated around Appalachia, the counties that shifted the most to the right in the Trump era are more spread out and predominantly in the South and West. Twenty-nine Texas counties show up in the list of 100 counties that saw the greatest gain in GOP presidential vote margin between 2016 and 2024, and 12 of those are among the 20 that saw the biggest shifts. All of these Texas counties are majority-Hispanic, and some are more than 90% Hispanic, emblematic of Trump's dramatic improvement among Hispanic voters in 2024 as well as his success in heavily Hispanic areas along the border in 2020. Another heavily Hispanic county, Miami-Dade County, saw the 15th-largest shift in margin toward Republicans between 2016 and 2024 out of more than 3,000 counties nationwide. Other major population centers in New York City — including the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens — are in the top 100 too. And the 14 counties in Utah are typical of another trend: Many Republicans initially skeptical of Trump in 2016 (including Mormons, who make up a significant part of the electorate in Utah) largely fell in line eight years later. Democrats have seen their own shifts — the flip side of those GOP gains in a country that has remained tightly divided even as the two party coalitions have shifted significantly from 20 years ago. While the counties that saw the largest GOP gains over the last two decades were predominantly rural and small, the counties where Democrats improved the most are much larger, primarily in suburban and urban areas. The 100 counties where the GOP presidential vote margin grew most over the last two decades cast just 782,000 votes in 2024. The 100 counties that saw the most improvement in the Democratic presidential vote margin cast almost 20 million votes all together in 2024. Those Democratic-trending counties include key constituencies that have become more important to the party's coalition in recent years. On average, they are more heavily Black, more wealthy, more educated and more urban, an unsurprising mix of voters mobilized in the Obama era and those who have fled the Republican Party in the Trump era. They're also broadly more likely to have more newer residents — according to census data, those Democratic-trending counties have higher-than-average shares of residents who have recently moved to the county. Many of those major trends intersect in exurban and suburban Georgia, particularly in the Atlanta metro area. Seven Georgia counties are among the top eight that saw the most movement toward Democrats the two decades since 2004: Rockdale, Henry, Douglas, Gwinnett, Newton, Cobb and Fayette counties. All but Newton are in metro Atlanta, all are at least one-quarter Black, and most have higher incomes and education rates than the national average. Extremely wealthy and highly educated areas in northern Virginia, as well as counties like Teton County, Wyoming — home to the ritzy Jackson Hole ski resorts as well as major national parks — and Los Alamos County, New Mexico — home to the Department of Energy laboratory that helped develop the atomic bomb — are also among the counties that swung most toward Democrats over this period. Los Alamos County is particularly symbolic: It has the highest share of Ph.D.s among residents of any county in the country. Two more notable counties included in this list are Sarpy and Douglas counties in Nebraska, which make up the vast majority of the state's 2nd Congressional District — the 'blue dot' that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris carried in the last two presidential elections, securing one electoral vote even as Trump carried the state. The counties that shifted most toward Democrats between 2016 and 2024, the Trump era, are significantly whiter and slightly older than those that moved most over the last two decades. Twenty are in Colorado and nine are in Utah, but there are a handful of important counties in the Midwest too. The two counties that saw the biggest Democratic shifts in the last eight years are both in Utah: Utah and Davis counties, around Provo and Salt Lake City, respectively. There's an important caveat here: In 2016, independent candidate Evan McMullin won 21% of the vote, deflating both parties' vote shares. Looking at more competitive states, almost one-third of Colorado's counties were among the 100 with the largest Democratic shifts in the Trump era, as were 11 in Georgia. Grand Traverse County, Michigan, and Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, have also seen more recent shifts, emblematic of how some educated, suburban Republican strongholds have been moving toward Democrats with Trump on the ballot. But those gains have been more moderate, an increase of 7 percentage points in the Democratic margin between 2016 and 2024 in Ozaukee, and 8 percentage points in Grand Traverse. This article was originally published on
