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arXiv:1404.1951cs.CY

Privacy Implications of Health Information Seeking on the Web

Tim Libert

Early discovery. Linked by one identifiable commenter. This paper is outside the main ranking; a mention is not an endorsement.

Abstract

This article investigates privacy risks to those visiting health- related web pages. The population of pages analyzed is derived from the 50 top search results for 1,986 common diseases. This yielded a total population of 80,124 unique pages which were analyzed for the presence of third-party HTTP requests. 91% of pages were found to make requests to third parties. Investigation of URIs revealed that 70% of HTTP Referer strings contained information exposing specific conditions, treatments, and diseases. This presents a risk to users in the form of personal identification and blind discrimination. An examination of extant government and corporate policies reveals that users are insufficiently protected from such risks.

arXiv comments
Journal reference
Communications of the ACM, 2015, Vol. 58 No. 3, Pages 68-77
DOI
doi:10.1145/2658983
Subjects
cs.CYComputers and Society cs.CRCryptography and Security

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Discussed in comments1 thread

  1. Looking Up Symptoms Online? These Companies Are Tracking You 1 comment

    • The original source paper is at http://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.1951.pdf Much as this sort of thing makes me glad I don't need to purchase private health insurance, the article would be a lot more helpful if it distinguished more clearly between what is and isn't legal use of the data…

      notahackerView on HNParent context

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