{"id":179054,"date":"2018-05-30T18:31:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T23:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/05\/30\/privacy-is-not-for-peasants\/"},"modified":"2018-05-30T18:31:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T23:31:00","slug":"privacy-is-not-for-peasants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/05\/30\/privacy-is-not-for-peasants\/","title":{"rendered":"Privacy Is Not for Peasants"},"content":{"rendered":"
It appears that mobile phone providers are telling potential advertisers when you go to the emergency room<\/a>, so that ambulance chasers can now electronically chase emergency room patients:<\/div>\n

With digital traps in hospitals, there\u2019s no need for personal injury lawyers to chase ambulances these days. <\/p>\n

Law firms are using geofencing in hospital emergency rooms<\/a> to target advertisements to patients\u2019 mobile devices as they seek medical care, according to Philadelphia public radio station WHYY. Geofencing can essentially create a digital perimeter around certain locations and target location-aware devices within the borders of those locations. Patients who unwittingly jump that digital fence may see targeted ads for more than a month, and on multiple devices, the outlet notes. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Last year, Healey\u2019s office barred a digital firm from using geofencing in healthcare settings<\/a> in the state after the firm was hired by a Christian pregnancy counseling and adoption agency to use digital perimeters to target ads to anyone who entered reproductive health facilities, including Planned Parenthood clinics<\/a>. The goal was to make sure \u201cabortion-minded women\u201d saw certain ads on their mobile devices as they sat in waiting rooms. The ads had text such as \u201cPregnancy Help\u201d or \u201cYou Have Choices,\u201d which, if clicked, would direct them to information about abortion alternatives. <\/p>\n

Healey equated the move to digital harassment and successfully claimed that it violated the state\u2019s consumer protection act. <\/p>\n

Still, the use of geofencing in hospitals for marketing is not necessarily illegal overall, and law firms and marketing agencies remain eager to put up their fences. Healthcare-related geo-targeting is occurring across the country, including in Tennessee and California. Bill Kakis, who runs the New York-based marketing firm Tell All Digital, told WHYY it was one of the fastest-growing parts of his business. He was recently hired by personal injury law firms in the Philadelphia area to target patients, for instance.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are two obvious conclusions about this, and they are that the new European privacy regulations, the GPDR<\/a> has two problems, it’s not strong enough, and that it is not here. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appears that mobile phone providers are telling potential advertisers when you go to the emergency room, so that ambulance chasers can now electronically chase emergency room patients: With digital traps in hospitals, there\u2019s no need for personal injury lawyers to chase ambulances these days. Law firms are using geofencing in hospital emergency rooms to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[364,366,460,382],"class_list":["post-179054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-evil","tag-privacy","tag-public-health","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179054"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}