Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), acknowledging mHealth apps are able to sell user information to third parties with little oversight, is calling for more regulation within the industry to ensure consumers' health data is protected.
A recent report from the Federal Trade Commission reveals the extent of the problem — the report found about 39 percent of the commercially available free health apps and 30 percent of the paid apps sent data to a party not disclosed either in the privacy policy or anywhere in the app itself.
Sen. Schumer highlighted FitBit as one of the devices that is able to use and sell the data it collects. "Personal fitness bracelets and the data they collect on your health, sleep and location, should be just that — personal. The fact that private health data — rich enough to identify the user's gait — is being gathered by applications like FitBit and can then be sold to third-parties without the user's consent is a true privacy nightmare," said Sen. Schumer. "If companies of fitness devices have the ability to sell personal health data to insurers, employers and others, users should be alerted and given the opportunity to decline."
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