The US Federal Trade Commission said on 1 February 2023 that GoodRx, a prescription discount and telehealth company, had for years shared users' prescription medications and health conditions with Facebook, Google, Criteo, Branch and Twilio for advertising, after promising users it would never share personal health information with advertisers. More than 55 million people had used its website or apps since January 2017. GoodRx agreed to a 1.5 million dollar civil penalty, the FTC's first action under its Health Breach Notification Rule. The proposed order bars it from sharing health data for advertising and requires it to tell third parties to delete what they received.
FTC penalty for sending users' prescription and health data to advertisers
affected · Website and mobile apps
More events
The rest of the wire, newest first.
Notice 29 Sept 2026
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
Notice 29 Sept 2026
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
Incident 25 Sept 2026
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