Two Lincoln men have filed a lawsuit against Bryan Health seeking to go forward as a class-action case on behalf of anyone who has visited the hospital's website, which they allege has shared personal information with Meta, Facebook's parent company, without their consent.
Robert Bussard and Daniel Gibson allege it violates their right to privacy.
In the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Lincoln, they are seeking damages under the Federal Wiretap Act and Nebraska's Wiretap Act.
The Nebraska case is just the latest of class-action lawsuits to pop up across the country since 2022 against companies that use the Meta Pixel tracking tool.
In it, their attorneys seek to bring the lawsuit on behalf of all users, prospective patients and current patients who visited Bryan Health's website "and had their private health conditions, identities, actual or potential medical treatments, and the hospitals they visited or may visit disclosed to Meta Platforms Inc. without their knowledge or consent."
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They allege Bryan Health's website was coded to include Meta Pixel, so when a user searches on the website for information or services related to a specific health condition and has previously or currently is signed into Facebook using the same browser, the website triggers the information to be automatically shared with Facebook.Â
Using Pixel allows them to target tracked users with ads and measure how well they work.Â
New York attorney Mark Reich said that when placed on a third-party website, like Bryan Health's, Pixel allows Facebook to "surreptitiously gather information regarding all user interactions with the website. Facebook then aggregates the data it collects across all the websites that implement the Pixel" in order to improve its machine-learning algorithm to better identify and target users across the web.
Reich said the information gathered includes things like health conditions, medications and pregnancy without first asking consumers for their approval to do it.
He said the collection of such data allowed pharmaceutical and other related companies to send targeted ads to the plaintiffs and others based on their private health information.Â
A Bryan Health spokesman said the health system is aware of the lawsuit but cannot comment about ongoing litigation.
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On Twitter @LJSpilger
Lori Pilger
Courts reporter
