Online counseling service BetterHelp has been accused of selling user data to Facebook and Snapchat by the FTC.
The online counseling service has agreed to pay a fine to settle the charges after the FTC alleged the company sold data about its users to Mark Zuckerberg and the Masters of the Universe after telling them it wouldn’t.that BetterHelp, a popular online counseling service, has agreed to pay $7.8 million to settle claims made by the FTC that it improperly shared customers’ private information with Facebook and Snapchat despite having made a commitment not to do so.
After a February 2020 article from Jezebel exposed some of its practices, the FTC asserts that BetterHelp provided customer service representatives with false scripts to try and reassure users that it wasn’t sharing personally identifiable or personal health information.
“BetterHelp betrayed consumers’ most personal health information for profit,” said Samuel Levine, FTC bureau of consumer protection director, according to the agency’s press release. The commission says that BetterHelp “used consumers’ email addresses and the fact that they had previously been in therapy to instruct Facebook to identify similar consumers and target them with advertisements,” helping it bring in “tens of thousands of new paying users and millions of dollars in revenue.
BetterHelp has released a statement calling its practices “industry-standard” but says: “we understand the FTC’s desire to set new precedents around consumer marketing, and we are happy to settle this matter with the agency.” It also clarifies that it’s never shared information like “members’ names or clinical data from therapy sessions” with “advertisers, publishers, social media platforms, or any other similar third parties.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter
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