HIPAA considers zipcodes to be PHI. Here’s a good example why: 85601 = Arivaca, Arizona; population 698. The 2010 census indicates there are 15 women in the 35-39 age bracket. 15-anonymous isn’t exactly what you want to be after trying to sign up for healthcare.
In this case healthcare.gov is lucky in that gender isn’t explicitly provided, and year of birth is +/- 1 in either direction, so there would be skew in attempting to deidentify people, but this is still a problem.
Sorry, I was feeling a little punchy. I can agree this is bad, but it’s not “my entire medical history was beamed around the planet” bad. I’m not losing sleep over th fact that double click knows I’m not pregnant.
I guess I’m a little irked that “downloading is not a crime” EFF frequently plays the strict technical definition card, but in this case totally conflates healthcare.gov sending your info and your browser sending that info.
I think “sends” vs “leaks” is an important distinction wrt agency and motive.
I would (and do) care about these issues a lot more when I feel I’m not being manipulated into a particular viewpoint.
Hmm, what puzzles me is that no one complains about inclusion of third party executable code in a website that is handling sensitive information, opening door to targeted data collection. We’ve grown accustomed to embedding third party code so much that we do it even after user have logged in and the script can, undetected, perform actions in user’s name.
I’m very confused as to why this article refers to Doubleclick as a company, distinct from Google. Doubleclick is a Google product.
UGH. Alternate title: healthcare.gov (like millions of other web sites) leaks referrer information.
As always, the EFF is hard at work to convince me I should ignore them completely.
Usually your referrer information doesn’t contain things like:
HIPAA considers zipcodes to be PHI. Here’s a good example why: 85601 = Arivaca, Arizona; population 698. The 2010 census indicates there are 15 women in the 35-39 age bracket. 15-anonymous isn’t exactly what you want to be after trying to sign up for healthcare.
Revisiting the Uniqueness of Simple Demographics in the US Population has surprising examples of how even limited datasets such as this can be used to reduce anonymity to significant degrees.
In this case healthcare.gov is lucky in that gender isn’t explicitly provided, and year of birth is +/- 1 in either direction, so there would be skew in attempting to deidentify people, but this is still a problem.
I’ll be eagerly awaiting the required notification to HHS about this breach.
Apparently healthcare.gov does not have to be HIPAA compliant.
I think there’s a difference between run-of-the-mill referrer information and leaking annual income and medical history.
Sorry, I was feeling a little punchy. I can agree this is bad, but it’s not “my entire medical history was beamed around the planet” bad. I’m not losing sleep over th fact that double click knows I’m not pregnant.
I guess I’m a little irked that “downloading is not a crime” EFF frequently plays the strict technical definition card, but in this case totally conflates healthcare.gov sending your info and your browser sending that info.
I think “sends” vs “leaks” is an important distinction wrt agency and motive.
I would (and do) care about these issues a lot more when I feel I’m not being manipulated into a particular viewpoint.
A.) Most US .gov web sites do not.
B.) It was an AP story, not something the EFF conjured up: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/31490a20926d4ed3b98ff2d0ed8fc81d/new-privacy-concerns-over-governments-health-care-website
Hmm, what puzzles me is that no one complains about inclusion of third party executable code in a website that is handling sensitive information, opening door to targeted data collection. We’ve grown accustomed to embedding third party code so much that we do it even after user have logged in and the script can, undetected, perform actions in user’s name.