House Oversight Committee members Reps. Carolyn Maloney, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Sara Jacobs on Thursday night sent letters to five data broker companies and five health-tracking app companies seeking information about their collection, retention and sale of personal health data. The companies have until July 21 to respond, according to the letters, which were viewed by CNN Business.
The companies contacted by lawmakers include data broker firms SafeGraph, Digital Envoy, Pacer.ai, Gravy Analytics and Babel Street, as well as health-tracker app operators Flo Health, Glow, BioWink, GP International and Digitalchemy Ventures. In recent weeks, some period and fertility tracking apps, including Flo, have announced an “anonymous” mode that they say will help protect users.
In the letters, the lawmakers asked data brokers, for example, for information related to their revenues from the sale of location data and a list of purchasers of information related to family planning clinics or abortion services. They also asked the health-tracking apps for “documents and communications concerning the actual or potential production” of personal reproductive or sexual health data, either voluntarily or in response to a legal request, as well as communications about such data with state and local governments.
“The collection of sensitive data could pose serious threats to those seeking reproductive care as well as to providers of such care, not only by facilitating intrusive government surveillance, but also by putting people at risk of harassment, intimidation, and even violence,” the lawmakers wrote.
