LloydsPharmacy shared customers’ sensitive data for targeted advertising
LloydsPharmacy has been sharing customer data on sensitive purchases such as Viagra with TikTok and Facebook in order to feed them information for their targeted advertising systems, an investigation has found.
The high street company is one of hundreds of online chemists found to have been using tiny pieces of computer code that can share personal details with the tech giants – including full names and phone numbers.
A joint investigation by the Guardian and Radio Sweden found the websites contained advertising “pixels” embedded in their checkout page. In other cases the pixels were included in search results, giving the social networks access to users’ specific symptoms.
One test saw the pixels collect exact search terms entered on Lloyds’s site – “erectile dysfunction” and “irritable bowel syndrome” – as well as the specific products added to the shopping cart. These included Viagra, thrush cream and a chlamydia test.
By monitoring network traffic, it was possible to see those terms being sent to the social media companies. In the checkout process, both the Facebook and TikTok tracking pixels collected the email address of the user. Lloyds also sent Facebook the user’s first and last name, while it sent TikTok their phone number.
At no point was explicit consent given for the information sharing, and there was no option to turn off the transmission in the cookie disclosure.
More than 200 pharmacies across Europe have advertising pixels from Facebook, TikTok or both, and may be sharing customers’ emails and other personally identifiable data with the social networks.
But close examination of the largest such pharmacies found only Lloyds was sending sensitive medical information, as well as personally identifiable data, to
Read more on theguardian.com
