Mental Health Startup Cerebral Exposes Personal Data of Over 3 Million Patients to Google, Meta, and TikTok

A telehealth startup, Cerebral, disclosed that it shared personal data of over 3.1 million US patients with companies including Google, Meta, and TikTok.

Cerebral, a telehealth startup that gained popularity during the early days of the pandemic, has recently disclosed that it shared the personal data of more than 3.1 million US patients with social media companies and advertisers, including Google, Meta, and TikTok. 

This includes names, phone numbers, birth dates, and insurance information, and in some cases, data collected through the mental health self-assessment patients completed to schedule counseling appointments and access other services. Cerebral admitted that it used “pixels,” tracking scripts that companies like Meta offer to third-party developers for advertising purposes, to collect user data since it began operating in October 2019. 

After learning of the oversight, Cerebral says it has disabled, reconfigured, and/or removed the tracking pixels that caused the data exposure. The US Department of Health and Human Services is investigating the company, and this news follows recent settlements by other companies that shared health data for ad targeting. 

We take our privacy seriously, and this is a reminder that we should always be cautious about sharing personal information online. It's always better to double-check the apps or websites we use and the data they collect before sharing any personal information.