NEW: @HHSgov released updated guidance about user tracking on hospital websites.

It, unsurprisingly, confirms that HIPAA rules apply within patient portals.

But it also confirms that HIPAA rules can apply BEFORE login. This is a big deal—let’s dig in: There’s been disagreement as to whether HIPAA applies on hospital pages where visitors might not all be active patients.

But @HHSgov has now said that yes, HIPAA does apply on appointment pages, login pages, and pages with info on specific health conditions.

NEW: Major tax filing companies, like H&R Block and TaxAct, have been sending your information to Facebook as you file your taxes online.

The penalties for disclosing data without consent could be steep. themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/202… We’re not talking just names and email addresses being sent to Facebook.

The personal information @varlogsimon, @angiewaller, and @colinlecher found included:
• Income
• Filing Status
• Refund amount
• Health savings account usage
• Dependents’ college scholarship amount

NEW: In cities across the U.S., four major internet providers are charging the same price for drastically different speeds.

And the worst deals were disproportionately offered to lower-income and least-White neighborhoods, @LeonYin and @ASankin found. mrkup.org/broadband Take New Orleans: Shirley Neville, who lives in a middle-class, largely Black neighborhood, said her @ATT connection left her struggling to join video meetings.

Meanwhile in a mostly White, upper-income neighborhood, @ATT offered speeds almost 400x faster—for the same price.

The “connected vehicle data” industry is a growing, largely unregulated ecosystem of businesses that seek to monetize your car data.

Let’s walk through the types of players in it. Car manufacturers, also known as OEMs (original equipment manufacturers):

So you’re about to get in your car and go about your day.

Unbeknownst to you, your moves are being captured.

Here’s what happens next: If your car came with built-in internet connection, dozens of sensors then emit data to your car’s computers.

You’ve unlocked the door; you’re in the driver’s seat; the temperature is 86° F; the sunroof is open; you’ve pressed the ignition; a trip has started from X location.

NEW: Some of the country’s top hospitals have been sending sensitive patient information to Facebook.

These hospitals may have violated HIPAA, experts say. themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/202… When we clicked a button to schedule an appointment at the following hospitals, Facebook was sent a packet of data that included details like our IP addresses, selected doctors’ names, and more.

Our latest with @reveal: The world’s largest social media platform—Facebook—knows who’s visiting the websites of hundreds of crisis pregnancy centers. themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/202… Crisis pregnancy centers may look like health clinics. In reality, they aim to steer people away from abortion.

And code on hundreds of such “clinic” websites is sending visitor data to Facebook. In many cases, extremely sensitive data—like if a person was considering abortion.

So your internet is running slow again. What do you do now? Start with a speed test at speedtest.net or speed.measurementlab.net.

A “good” speed really depends on what you’re doing—@CommonSense recommends 200 mbps download for virtual classes, but Netflix says you can binge in HD at just 15 mbps download.

We just asked Uber whether drivers can cancel rides without penalty if they feel uncomfortable with unmasked passengers.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1516392436196597763

Company spokesperson Andrew Hasbun responded that Uber “encourages drivers to cancel trips if they don't feel safe and canceling a trip for safety reasons does not count against a driver’s cancellation rate.”

A decade ago, a group of UCLA professors developed software that used data to predict where crime would happen, promising police could thwart it.

PredPol, as they called it, was supposed to be race neutral. We and @Gizmodo found its predictions are not. themarkup.org/prediction-bia… We found more than seven million predictions PredPol sent to dozens of police departments and left unsecured on the web.

We analyzed predictions for 38 U.S. policing agencies between 2018 and 2021—and discovered a pattern.

Your contributions to nonprofit newsrooms like ours help journalists conduct vital investigations. themarkup.org/give-today If you’re looking for other nonprofit newsrooms to support this #GivingNewsDay, we hope you’ll consider @scalawagmag...

https://twitter.com/scalawagmag/status/1465713497640255491

This #GivingNewsDay, here’s a look at the power of a nonprofit newsroom in 2021. 🧵 In February, @darakerr found Postmates couriers were the targets of a phishing scam that drained multiple workers of their earnings.

After publication, the workers we interviewed were reimbursed for their lost earnings. themarkup.org/working-for-an…

Our colleagues at Germany’s @SZ used Citizen Browser data to uncover the messaging that made its way into voters’ news feeds during the country’s recent election cycle. getrevue.co/profile/citize… They found voters of the far-right AfD party were more likely to see posts attacking issues like climate change, migration, and COVID-19 from their party leaders.

Meanwhile, voters from other parties were generally served coverage on those topics from established media outlets.

We published our 200th story today.

This is a huge milestone for our small nonprofit newsroom—mind if we indulge in a quick recap of our recent work? ⬇️ This story from @darakerr was one of @ToddFeathers’ favorite pieces of journalism this year.

“An example of investigating an industry that tries to turn people into data and turning it around by using data to show the tragedies that attitude can create.”
themarkup.org/working-for-an…

Police can request data on every person’s device in a specific area through something called a “geofence warrant.”

In California, law enforcement agencies appear to be severely underreporting these warrants, @tenuous and @alfredwkng found. themarkup.org/privacy/2021/1… Geofence warrants are a fairly new concept mostly involving data from Google.

Privacy advocates say they violate civil liberties. For example, the @ACLU found that law enforcement was using geofence data to track Black Lives Matter protesters in 2016. themarkup.org/ask-the-markup…

NEW: Amazon placed items from its house brands and exclusives ahead of competitors with better customer ratings and more sales, @adrjeffries and @leonyin found after examining the results of nearly 3,500 popular product searches. themarkup.org/amazons-advant… Take Amazon’s Happy Belly Cinnamon Crunch cereal, for example.

It had four stars and 1,010 reviews, but Amazon gave it the number one search result spot, ahead of Cap’n Crunch, which had five stars and 14,069 reviews.

In 2019, Crystal Marie and Eskias McDaniels were set to close on their dream home in Charlotte, N.C.

They were excellent applicants: good jobs, plenty of savings, and great credit.

Then, their mortgage application was denied. themarkup.org/denied/2021/08… The reason? Crystal Marie was a contractor, not a full-time employee—even though her boss told the lender she wasn’t at risk of losing her job.

Her co-workers, also contractors, had mortgages. They are White. She is Black.

We found racial disparities in home loan denial rates throughout the mortgage industry.

But among large lenders, those owned by our nation’s largest home builders had some of the widest gaps, report @MalenaCarollo and @eh_mah_nwel. Thread. 🧵themarkup.org/denied/2021/08… Have you heard of D.R. Horton, Lennar Corporation, or PulteGroup Inc.? These are our nation’s largest home builders.

They have some things in common beyond new construction: owning mortgage companies that denied applicants of color at higher rates than their White counterparts.

#NEW: Lenders are more likely to deny home loans to people of color than White people with similar financial backgrounds.

Black people were 80% more likely to be denied, @eh_mah_nwel and @lkirchner reveal in their latest investigation.
themarkup.org/denied/2021/08… Nationally, our analysis found, the mortgage industry was 40% to 80% more likely in 2019 to deny home loans to people of color than to White people with similar financial characteristics.

🧵 Our #Blacklight project was created because we wanted to give our readers a sense of agency about their relationship to technology. Our tool is a real-time privacy inspector that visits user-requested websites, scans for known types of privacy violations, and returns an instant privacy analysis of the inspected site.

🧵 We think that the Van Buren v. United States case before the Supreme Court today is a threat to data journalism. So much so that we filed an amicus brief. This is why: The case deals with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and its definition of "exceeds authorized access" in relation to one’s intentionally accessing a computer system they have authorization to access.