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UnitedHealth Says Hackers Possibly Stole Large Number of Americans’ Data
UnitedHealth Group (UNH.N) said on Monday that hackers stole health and personal data of potentially a “substantial proportion” of Americans from its systems in February, as the largest U.S. health insurer scrambles to contain the damage.
The intrusion at its Change Healthcare unit, which processes about 50% of U.S. medical claims, was one of the worst hacks to hit American healthcare and caused widespread disruption in payment to doctors and health facilities.
The disclosure suggests patients’ healthcare information remains vulnerable. An initial review of the compromised data showed files with protected health information or personally identifiable information “which could cover a substantial proportion of people in America,” the company said in a statement on its website.
That theft on Feb. 21 occurred despite a ransom payment.
AI Can Predict Political Orientations From Blank Faces — and Researchers Fear ‘Serious’ Privacy Challenges
Researchers are warning that facial recognition technologies are “more threatening than previously thought” and pose “serious challenges to privacy” after a study found that artificial intelligence can be successful in predicting a person’s political orientation based on images of expressionless faces.
A recent study published in the journal American Psychologist says an algorithm’s ability to accurately guess one’s political views is “on par with how well job interviews predict job success, or alcohol drives aggressiveness.” Lead author Michal Kosinski told Fox News Digital that 591 participants filled out a political orientation questionnaire before the AI captured what he described as a numerical “fingerprint” of their faces and compared them to a database of their responses to predict their views.
The authors wrote that their findings “underscore the urgency for scholars, the public, and policymakers to recognize and address the potential risks of facial recognition technology to personal privacy” and that an “analysis of facial features associated with political orientation revealed that conservatives tended to have larger lower faces.”
“Perhaps most crucially, our findings suggest that widespread biometric surveillance technologies are more threatening than previously thought,” the study warned. “Previous research showed that naturalistic facial images convey information about political orientation and other intimate traits. But it was unclear whether the predictions were enabled by self-presentation, stable facial features, or both. Our results, suggesting that stable facial features convey a substantial amount of the signal, imply that individuals have less control over their privacy.”
TikTok Announces Crack Down on ‘Conspiracy Theories’
As of May 17, TikTok will start implementing new rules affecting content appearing on the app’s For You feed (FYF), and the changes are prompted by concerns about so-called “harmful speech” and “misinformation.”
FYF is vital for the visibility of content since it opens and plays videos automatically when the app is launched, something TikTok refers to as its “personalized recommendation system.”
A post on the company’s site titled, “For You Feed Eligibility Standards,” reveals that content that is deemed as health or news “misinformation” will be censored from this tab more stringently going forward.
On the health side, TikTok looks to clamp down on anything from videos promoting “unproven treatments,” dieting and weight loss, plastic surgery (unless related risks are included as well), videos allegedly misrepresenting scientific findings, to the very broadly defined content that is considered misleading, and “could potentially” cause harm to public health.
Former DHS Disinformation Office Chief Joins Nonprofit, Calls Out GOP Lawmakers
Nina Jankowicz, the former Department of Homeland Security disinformation chief, has joined a nonprofit to combat disinformation ahead of the 2024 election and as artificial intelligence (AI) is on the rise.
Jankowicz joined the American Sunlight Project and sent a letter to congressional leaders who have “done little to improve the health of our information environment” in the years since Russia interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The letter, addressed to GOP Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), James Comer (Ky.) and Dan Bishop (N.C.) claimed their House committees are using government resources to attack researchers who are examining the intersections of national security, technology and information.
“Disinformation knows no political party. Its ultimate victim is democracy,” they wrote. “This threat is growing more acute each day, and you have become the primary obstacle to addressing it.”
HHS Issues Final Rule to Protect Privacy of Reproductive Healthcare Data — ‘One Thing Dobbs Did Not Take Away, and That Is the Right of Americans to Their Privacy’
Patients who share their health information — including reproductive health information — with providers and health plans have the right to have that information kept private, according to a final rule issued Monday by HHS.
“Families who are hoping to have children through in vitro fertilization are finding that Dobbs may have ruined that opportunity,” he continued.
“They’re finding that access to contraception care, which is not abortion, [is] now being threatened as well. And so today Americans are living lives recognizing that at least for women, they have fewer rights today than their mothers did, and it is difficult sometimes to comprehend. But there is one thing Dobbs did not take away, and that is the right of Americans to their privacy.”
State COVID Policies Didn’t Translate Into Fewer Cases, Deaths, Study Suggests
A research letter published today in JAMA Network Open suggests that U.S. states and territories that had more policies aimed at reducing COVID-19 rates in nursing homes (NHs) and home healthcare agencies (HHAs) didn’t necessarily have a lower burden of the disease.
The Columbia University-led research team used NH- and/or HHA-specific policies from state and territory government websites to identify 38 COVID-19 policies implemented from March 2020 to July 2022. They then linked the policy data with community-level and NH-specific COVID-19 cases and deaths to create a dataset and dashboard to help researchers and public health officials assess policy effectiveness.
Having more state- and territory COVID-19 policies wasn’t consistently tied to lower community- or NH-level disease burden, which the authors said suggests that policy effectiveness may depend on implementation and compliance.
“For example, on May 24, 2020, Montana, Hawaii, and Alaska had no COVID-19 deaths or policies, in contrast with North Carolina’s moderate burden and several policies,” the researchers wrote. “By January 12, 2021, New York had a severe COVID-19 burden and the greatest number of policies, while Pennsylvania, Montana, and Florida had a similar COVID-19 burden but fewer policies.”
