Despite repeated assurances from the company, Facebook security policies have always come under scrutiny. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting and The Markup latest findings, Facebook uses that data to influence and target people online. According to reports, Facebook tracks users who visit abortion-related pages and websites. The search results are then used to persuade people to consider alternatives to abortion.
According to the investigation conducted by Reveal and the Markup, Facebook collects data from the websites of hundreds of anti-abortion clinics. According to the website findings, the social media company employs Blacklight, a Markup tool that employs various types of user-tracking technology on websites.
Reveal closely tracked nearly 2500 crisis pregnancy centres and discovered that 294 of the 2500 websites shared visitor information with Facebook. The website discovered that the information in many cases was extremely sensitive and private. It contained information such as whether a person intended to abort her pregnancy or take a pregnancy test.
In a statement to Reveal, a Facebook spokesperson said it is against the company's policies to share sensitive information about users with third parties.
"It is against our policies for websites and apps to send sensitive information about people via our Business Tools," including its advertising technology. "Our system is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data that it detects, and we work to educate advertisers on how to properly set up our Business Tools," said Dale Hogan, a Facebook spokesperson. Facebook, on the other hand, refused to provide detailed answers about its filtering systems and policies regarding data from crisis pregnancy centres.
According to the report, when someone makes an appointment for a "abortion consultation" or "pre-termination screening," the majority of the websites send data to Facebook.
Not only did the websites share information about users who visited abortion websites, but more than 39 of them also sent personal information about the users to Facebook, such as the person's name, email address, or phone number.
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