Sharp.com Visitors’ Personal, Health Information Secretly Passed to Facebook, Class Action Claims

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A proposed class action claims that Sharp Healthcare, the foremost healthcare provider in San Diego and operator of Sharp.com, secretly transmits website visitors’ personal data to Facebook without consent.

According to the 30-page complaint, Sharp Healthcare ran afoul of California privacy laws by “conspir[ing] with Facebook” to collect and transmit its patients’ personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) intercepted from private communications with its website.

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Sharp Healthcare’s website—which allows patients to search for physicians, schedule appointments, look over treatment options and chat directly with providers in real time—utilizes a Facebook tracking pixel, the lawsuit explains. A tracking pixel is a piece of code that can be embedded into a business’s website in order to enable Facebook to intercept and record visitor data and interactions on the page, the suit relays.

The case charges that by making use of a Facebook tracking pixel, which can record every movement a user makes on Sharp.com, the defendant has “unlawfully disclosed” and transmitted its patients’ private information to an unauthorized third party without consent.

According to the complaint, if a patient visits the “Find a Provider” section of Sharp.com in order to book an appointment or search for a doctor, for example, the Facebook tracking pixel can intercept and transmit large amounts of private information, including the patient’s medical conditions, health concerns, treatment data, details on the doctors searched and appointment information.

Sharp Healthcare’s alleged disclosures also consisted of patients’ IP addresses, geographic locations and Facebook IDs, which can be used to identify patients’ Facebook profiles and gain access to all public data listed on their personal pages, the filing claims. By passing patients’ Facebook IDs to the social media company, Sharp Healthcare thereby provides enough information to link a patient to their online habits and preferences, the lawsuit contends.

The two plaintiffs, California residents, accessed Sharp.com many times over the past several years in order to schedule appointments and search for physicians, the case relays. The plaintiffs discovered the alleged third-party disclosures in November 2022, the complaint claims, though neither had given their consent to any such transmission of their personal information to Facebook.

Per the filing, besides owning a handful of hospitals and medical groups, including Sharp Memorial Hospital, Sharp Healthcare also operates a “full spectrum of other facilities and services,” including centers for urgent care, cancer, mental health, rehabilitation, physical therapy and more. The suit stresses that Sharp Healthcare therefore handles the information of “hundreds of thousands of patients each year.”

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone residing in California whose personally identifiable information or protected health information was disclosed to Facebook without consent through the use of the Facebook pixel tracking tool and in connection with visiting Sharp.com during the applicable statute of limitations.

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