Uncertain Boundaries: How Courts and Regulators View the Sharing of Health

Recent regulatory actions and court decisions highlight growing uncertainty over whether sharing article title data from webpages amounts to disclosure of sensitive health information under privacy laws.

Consider a consumer casually browsing the open internet, not logged into a hospital portal, and clicking on articles such as “Managing Life After a Diabetes Diagnosis” or “Understanding Early Symptoms of Depression.” If the URL or article title is then transmitted to an advertising platform through a cookie or pixel, does that constitute disclosure of sensitive health information?

California’s Attorney General has suggested that it can, reasoning that reading content linked to medical conditions may itself reveal sensitive personal details. Federal courts, on the other hand, have been mo