A lawsuit accuses Labcorp of violating state and federal law as well as its own publicly stated policies by using computer code on its website to take people’s personal medical information and using it to enhance the company’s profit.
The lawsuit was filed last week in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania by a Pennsylvania man and a Maryland woman who have both used Labcorp’s website over the years to schedule testing and view information about their conditions, but the suit seeks class-action status to represent potentially thousands of people who have used the website.
Labcorp has not yet filed a response to the suit.
The lawsuit alleges that through three types of Google computer code, Labcorp intercepts a wide array of individually-identifiable health information from all Labcorp website users and sends this information to Google.
Google then uses “cookies” to match this information to individual users, build-out the profiles of Google account holders, analyze the individually-identifiable health information and share this analysis with Labcorp so both companies can put these patients’ information to multiple uses, including targeting individual website users with advertising.
Labcorp’s website includes a page where users can opt out of cookies collecting their information, but opting out does not override or delete Labcorp’s Google tools, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
