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Financial Surveillance? PayPal Plots Ad Network Built Off Your Purchase History and Shopping Habits
PayPal has announced that it is creating an ad platform “powered” by the data the payment service giant has from millions of both customers and merchants — specifically, from their transaction information.
The data harvesting here will be on by default, but PayPal users (Venmo is included in the scheme) will be able to opt out of what some critics refer to as yet another example of “financial surveillance.” The company’s massive business in the first quarter of this year alone amounted to 6.5 transactions processed for 427 million customers.
In this way, PayPal is joining others who are turning to using customer data to monetize targeted advertising. In the company’s industry, Visa and JPMorgan Chase have been making similar moves, while big retailers “share” this type of data with Big Tech.
Germany Scraps a COVID Vaccination Requirement for Military Servicepeople
Germany has scrapped a requirement for its military servicepeople to be vaccinated against COVID-19, a mandate that had been in place since late 2021, the government said Wednesday.
People serving with the German military, the Bundeswehr, are required to get vaccinations against a number of diseases — including measles, mumps and flu — so long as individuals have no specific health issues to prevent that.
COVID-19 was added to the list in November 2021, meaning that anyone who refused to get vaccinated against it could face disciplinary measures.
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has now dropped the COVID-19 requirement following recommendations from the Bundeswehr’s chief medical officer and a military medical advisory committee, ministry spokesperson Mitko Müller said. It has been replaced by a strong recommendation to get the vaccine.
Another Pandemic Is ‘Absolutely Inevitable’, Says Patrick Vallance
The former chief scientific adviser to the government Sir Patrick Vallance has said another pandemic is “absolutely inevitable” and urged the incoming British government to focus on preparing for it, warning “We are not ready yet.”
Speaking at a panel event at the Hay Festival in Powys, Vallance said it is “great we are having an election” as there are “clearly issues that need to be sorted out”. One of the things the next government must do is implement “better surveillance to be able to pick these things up,” he said.
He also reiterated what he said to G7 leaders in 2021, that “we need to be much faster, much more aligned — and there are ways to do this — at getting rapid diagnostic tests, rapid vaccines, rapid treatments, so that you don’t have to go into the extreme measures that took place” during the COVID-19 pandemic. The measures he recommends are possible to implement, Vallance believes, but “require some coordination.”
He mentioned the World Health Organization’s push for the pandemic accord, a proposed agreement for countries to work together to prepare for pandemics, as one of the “steps in the right direction” that are being taken. “But I don’t think there’s enough focus,” he said. If this issue gets pushed off G7 and G20 agendas, “we’ll be in exactly the same position, and I hope that’s an important outcome of the inquiry.”
Uganda Tackles Yellow Fever With New Travel Requirement, Vaccination Campaign for Millions
Uganda has rolled out a nationwide yellow fever vaccination campaign to help safeguard its population against the mosquito-borne disease that has long posed a threat.
By the end of April, Ugandan authorities had vaccinated 12.2 million of the 14 million people targeted, said Dr. Michael Baganizi, an official in charge of immunization at the health ministry.
Uganda will now require everyone traveling to and from the country to have a yellow fever vaccination card as an international health regulation, Baganizi said.
Ugandan authorities hope the requirement will compel more people to get the yellow fever shot amid a general atmosphere of vaccine hesitancy that worries healthcare providers in the East African nation.
Mayo Clinic Must Face Religious Bias Claims Over COVID Vaccine Policy, Court Rules
A U.S. appeals court on Friday revived a lawsuit accusing the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota of illegally firing five employees who refused on religious grounds to receive the COVID-19 vaccine or be regularly tested for the virus.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the judge who tossed out the consolidated lawsuits last year wrongly ruled that the workers had not connected their objections to Mayo’s COVID-19 policies with sincere Christian religious beliefs.
Three of the workers were fired for refusing the vaccine and two others who received religious exemptions were terminated for declining weekly COVID-19 testing. They claimed that their refusal stemmed from the belief that their bodies are temples and from their objections to the use of fetal cells in the production of vaccines.
“The district court erred by emphasizing that many Christians elect to receive the vaccine,” U.S. Circuit Judge Duane Benton wrote. “Beliefs do not have to be uniform across all members of a religion or acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others.”
A Lawsuit Claims a Palm Beach County Health Network Shared Patient Info With Meta
A recent lawsuit alleges Palm Beach Health Network shared “highly sensitive personal information” with Facebook’s parent company, Meta, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
The health network is accused of sharing code from its website with the company, allowing Facebook to target patients with personalized ads based on sensitive information.
The lawsuit alleges Palm Beach Health Network installed Facebook’s Meta Pixel and other invisible third-party tracking technology on its websites to intercept patients’ information “with the express purpose” of disclosing the information.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach. The lead plaintiff alleges that he started seeing ads on Facebook about his “particular medical conditions and treatments.” after he used the Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center website and patient portal.
Massachusetts Shelled Out Nearly $400K for Vaccine Record Checks in State-Run Shelters
State officials have pumped nearly $400,000 into a program to review the vaccine records of families entering the emergency shelter system, including migrants from other countries who may have foreign documentation, according to the Healey administration.
Officials at Boston-based John Snow, Inc., which has long worked with the state, have been contracted to review immunization documents. Since January, more than 1,200 children in state-run shelters have had their records checked, according to the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, or HHS.
Vaccine record checks have occurred since September 2023 but the cost surfaced in a bi-weekly report on the shelter system released Monday, which said $381,000 has been shuttled to the program.
The Department of Public Health has run “catch-up vaccination clinics” through the winter and spring for families to receive vaccinations. State officials have handed out over 4,000 vaccinations at the clinics since January, according to the state.
Millions of U.S. Customers Have Social Security Numbers Stolen in Major Sav-Rx Data Breach
The hackers that hit Sav-Rx late in 2023 made away with sensitive data on more than 2.8 million people in the United States, the company has confirmed in a filing with the Maine Attorney General.
Sav-Rx is a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), a company that provides prescription drug benefit services to various organizations such as unions, employers, and health plans. Its work includes the management and facilitation of prescription medication delivery, negotiations with drug manufacturers and pharmacies regarding prices, and more.
The data that was exposed in this incident includes people’s full names, birth dates, Social Security Numbers (SSN), email addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, eligibility data, and insurance identification numbers. While it’s commendable that clinical data was not accessed, the type of information stolen is more than enough for any hacking group to use in identity theft, phishing, or social engineering attacks.
