Sick Grandparents For Sale By Data Miners At 15 Cents A Name

Magazine Advertising

Remedy Health may have used the list to advertise one of its magazines, which has been defunct for several years, said David Lee, the company’s executive vice president of publishing.

A growing source of data fodder are website registration forms that ask for health information in order for a user to access the site or receive an e-mail newsletter.

One such site is Primehealthsolutions.com, which provides basic health information on a variety of conditions. It makes money by collecting data on diseases its users have been diagnosed with and medications they are taking, which people disclose when signing up for the site’s e-mail newsletter.

The site has more than three dozen lists for sale, including a tally of 2.2 million people with depression, 267,000 with Alzheimer’s, 553,000 with impotence, and 2.1 million women going through menopause.

Jason Rines, a co-owner of Prime Health Solutions, said he will share the lists only with those marketing health-related products, like pharmaceutical or medical device makers.

Purchasing Trail

Acxiom said it uses retail purchase history or magazine subscriptions to make assessments about whether someone has a particular disease interest.

Health data collection is troubling to people like Rebecca Price, who has early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. While she now makes no secret of her disease and serves as a member of the Alzheimer’s Association’s early stage advisory group, that wasn’t always the case. Price, a 62-year-old former doctor, said she initially didn’t even tell her husband of her condition for fear word would get out and harm her personally and financially.

“It is a very, very personal diagnosis,” Price said.

Social media is another potential way information can be collected on patients, said Dixon, of the World Privacy Forum, who warns patients to be more careful about what they share on sites like Facebook.

“Don’t ‘like’ the hospital website or comment ‘thank you for the great breast cancer screening you gave me,’” she said. “Under the Facebook policy that is public information and it is in the wild and if someone goes to that site and pulls it off, it is totally public.”