Facebook is collecting data on people who visit the Crisis Pregnancy Center website, CNET reported, raising concerns among privacy experts that information about abortion-seekers could be misused.
Reveal and The Markup, from the Center for Investigative Reporting, analyzed nearly 2,500 crisis pregnancy center websites and found at least 294 of them shared visitor information with Facebook. Some sensitive personal data includes information on whether a person is considering an abortion or trying to obtain emergency contraception or a pregnancy test.
Concerns about how user data could be used to identify abortionists have grown after Politico published a report on a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion that suggested the court may cancel the landmark “Roy” v. Wade” decision.
In May, U.S. lawmakers urged Google to stop collecting and retaining user location data that could be used to identify people seeking abortions. The Supreme Court’s decision isn’t final, but it would remove the federal Constitution’s protections for abortion rights. Individual states will choose whether to restrict or ban abortion.
It’s unclear how Facebook uses data on abortion seekers, Reveal and The Markup reported. But in states that ban abortion, those who denounce abortion can use the data as evidence against abortionists, privacy experts say. They say anti-abortion clinics could also use the data to advertise or misinform people to discourage them from opting for an abortion.
Dale Hogan, a spokesman for Facebook’s parent company Meta, told the news organization that the company’s systems were “designed to filter out potentially sensitive data” and that apps and websites sending “sensitive information about people” through the company’s commercial tools violated Facebook rules of. Hogan made the same statement to CNET.
Reveal and The Markup said it’s not known whether Facebook’s filters captured the sensitive data. Some solutions that could prevent potential misuse of data include tightening filters on social media platforms, or getting rid of a tool called Meta Pixel, which allows websites to track visitor activity, privacy experts suggest.
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