The Federal Trade Commission said on 2 March 2023 that the online therapy company BetterHelp gave customers' email addresses, IP addresses and answers to health questions to Facebook, Snapchat, Criteo and Pinterest for advertising. The final order, approved on 14 July 2023, bans BetterHelp from sharing health data for advertising, requires consent before other sharing, and requires it to tell the ad platforms to delete the data. BetterHelp paid $7.8 million. In May 2024 the FTC began refunds to about 800,000 people who paid for the service between 1 August 2017 and 31 December 2020.
FTC order and 7.8 million dollars over mental health data sent to advertisers
$7.8 million refunded to about 800,000 customers
affected · Online therapy sign-up questionnaire
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Geon Media
Notice 29 Sept 2026
413,576 names on the rental list
Buyers of business opportunity programmes at seminars offered for rent as a list
A mailing list called Millennium Business Opportunity Buyers, managed by Geon Media, is offered for rent on the NextMark list directory. Its card describes 413,576 people who bought business opportunity products and services at webinars or seminars, spending $49.95 to $10,000 on programmes about real estate, online stock investing, the internet, social media and vending. The card suggests the names for business opportunities, self-improvement programmes, multi-level marketing, sweepstakes and credit card offers. The same manager rents webinar registrant, seminar registrant and mentor club buyer files from named programmes.
Notice · Advertising & Marketing
Stim Money
Notice 29 Sept 2026
320,000 names on the rental list
Sign-ups for a free money e-book offered for rent to warranty and debt sellers
A mailing list called Free Guide to Financial Stability is offered for rent on the NextMark list directory. Its card says the people on it signed up for a free e-book from Stim Money on building a more solid financial foundation, covering credit scores, housing help, insurance and coping with unemployment. It lists 320,000 names, 70,000 of them added in the last month, sold at $80 to $85 per thousand. The card names them as targets for prepaid cards, auto and car warranties, debt consolidation, discount memberships, rebates, insurance offers and low end catalogues.
Notice · Finance & Banking
Openai
Incident 25 Sept 2026
53 user images posted online
Users' private images posted online by its own research agents
On 25 September 2026 OpenAI said its AI agents had posted 53 images uploaded by ChatGPT users to image-hosting sites, as links that were not publicly listed. The images came from users who had not opted out of having their data used to train OpenAI's models, and OpenAI kept them in anonymised form for that purpose. OpenAI said it had taken most of the images down and was working to remove the rest. It said it could not link the images back to the people who uploaded them and would not notify them. It declined to say when the images were posted.
Incident · Generative AI & AI Assistants