Suicide Hotlines Promise Anonymity. Dozens of Their Websites Send Sensitive Data to Facebook

Privacy and Security News
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Websites for mental health crisis resources across the country—which promise anonymity for visitors, many of whom are at a desperate moment in their lives—have been quietly sending sensitive visitor data to Facebook, The Markup has found.

Dozens of websites tied to the national mental health crisis 988 hotline, which launched last summer, transmit the data through a tool called the Meta Pixel, according to testing conducted by The Markup. That data often included signals to Facebook when visitors attempted to dial for mental health emergencies by tapping on dedicated call buttons on the websites.

33 crisis center websites sent data to Meta

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@Jonah We need an angry emoji reaction :rage: This stuff is absolutely infuriating.

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So let me get this straight, the suicide hotline sell data to Facebook who gets traffic from user sharing fake-news stories and having tons of hate-speech there? This is hypocritical at it’s finest and such a slap in the face :person_facepalming:

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This is informative and unfortunate.

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As disturbing as this is…( it’s likely we all can surmise just what they may do with that data and leverage it, weaponize it against an individual who is genuinely having a crisis… and all the ways they could actually advance the very problem, etc.)

I was actually keeping an eye out for categorized topic about “mental health awareness” … inside of the efforts to become private…

Not only because I’m a believer that people can manage both success in privacy pursuits and achieving genuine security in their affects…but also mental health in an adaptively and congruent way towards one owns unencumbered natural human personality expression

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