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New report on Health Web Sites



----- Original Message -----
From: <webmaster@healthprivacy.org>
To: <healthprivacy-news@healthprivacy.org>;
Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2000 3:18 PM

> Today, the Health Privacy Project released a report on the privacy
> policies
> and practices of Health Web sites.  The report was co-authored by Richard
> Smith, an independent Internet security consultant based in Massachusetts.
>
> Funded by the California HealthCare Foundation, this report presents a
> profile of the policies and practices of 21 health-related Web sites. The
> sites were selected to represent a mix of the most trafficked consumer
> health sites.
>
> The report found that while 19 of the 21 Web sites surveyed have privacy
> policies, these policies do not meet Fair Information Practice Principles.
>  What's more, the overwhelming majority of sites do not extend their
> privacy policies to business partners and third parties (such as third
> party ad networks).  This is especially troublesome because users
> themselves may divulge information wihtout understanding the consequences.
>
> The full report is available at http://ehealth.chcf.org.
>
> An article also appeared in today's Washington Post.  "Medical Web Sites
> Faulted on Privacy," by John Schwartz, p. E1.
> http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/01/034l-020100-idx.html
>