Privacy Threats When Seeking Online Health Information

From the 8 July 2013 JAMA Internal Medicine article

Patients increasingly use the Internet to access health-related information for which they are not charged.¹In turn, websites gather information from those who browse their sites and target advertisements to them. Yet this business model masks a more complicated picture.

A patient who searches on a “free” health-related website for information related to “herpes” should be able to assume that the inquiry is anonymous. If not anonymous, the information knowingly or unknowingly disclosed by the patient should not be divulged to others.

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