FTC makes an ex­am­ple of GoodRx, bans dis­counter from shar­ing pri­vate health da­ta with ad­ver­tis­ers

Pre­scrip­tion drug dis­count provider GoodRx will no longer be al­lowed to share its users’ sen­si­tive health da­ta with ad­ver­tis­ers af­ter the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion charged the on­line coupon provider with fail­ing to no­ti­fy con­sumers of such dis­clo­sures to Face­book, Google, and oth­er com­pa­nies.

GoodRx agreed to pay a $1.5 mil­lion civ­il penal­ty for vi­o­lat­ing the FTC’s Health Breach No­ti­fi­ca­tion Rule af­ter the FTC said it re­peat­ed­ly vi­o­lat­ed a 2017 promise to not share sen­si­tive per­son­al health in­for­ma­tion. The FTC al­leged that the com­pa­ny shared users’ pre­scrip­tion med­ica­tions and per­son­al health con­di­tions with third par­ty ad­ver­tis­ers and plat­forms like Face­book, Google, Criteo, Branch and Twilio.

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