alt Hacker News> Nearly all of the 20 state-run health insurance exchanges in the US have added advertising trackers that transmit user activity
...why?
> State officials say they embed this technology on the exchanges to measure marketing campaigns and to advertise to people who visit their sites
What an absurdist reality we live in
> Tara Lee, a spokesperson for the Washington state exchange, said the tracker on the site was used for advertising campaigns, adding that email, phone and country identifiers were shared with TikTok.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2026-healthcare-advertisi...
Personally, I feel local government should not be engaging these services in this way. I don't feel that it's a wise use and that our government employees should be more protective of the public who use their services.
>...why?
The same reason that I put Google Analytics on my blog in 2014. They want to know how many people are using their site and how.
And like me, they didn't think about the fact that these analytics services are run by advertising companies that may use the data for other purposes. Unlike me, they have privacy laws to follow because they work with health data.