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 TikTok specifically.
Shortly after being contacted for comment, Lloyds removed the TikTok pixel from its website entirely, while the Facebook pixel was updated to only operate after the user accepts cookies. The pharmacy says this was unrelated to the inquiries, and was instead prompted by a change in IT provision.
Another British online pharmacy, E-surgery, also sent medical information to Facebook through the pixel, including responses given to the site through its online consultation questionnaire.
Facebook says it has a filter built in to detect and delete sensitive medical information before it has been stored in its systems. But the company was unable to answer questions about its effectiveness.
In a separate test carried out last year, researchers at Radio Sweden made its own fake pharmacy website and loaded a Facebook pixel on the checkout page. By visiting the fake pharmacy’s advertising manager, it was able to see sensitive data such as the queries and names of products had been stored by the social network.
In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said: “Advertisers should not send sensitive information about people through our business tools. Doing so is against our policies and we educate advertisers on properly setting up business tools to prevent this from occurring. Our system is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data it is able to detect.”
“We don’t want websites or apps sending us sensitive information about people,” the spokesperson added. “If a business sends us potentially sensitive data, which in some cases can happen in error, our filtering mechanism is designed to remove the potentially sensitive data it detects before that data can be stored in our ads systems. Like any technology, our filters won’t be able to catch everything all of the time. However, we are constantly improving our mechanisms to make sure we catch as much as we can.”
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Lloyds said: “LloydsPharmacy regularly reviews its cookies and privacy policies, to ensure they are in line with our legal and regulatory obligations. We are currently investigating the issues raised by Sveriges Radio and the Guardian.
“In the meantime, LloydsPharmacy can clarify that the change in use of pixels, referred to by Sveriges Radio and the Guardian, was not prompted by those inquiries, but was the result of the transition of its IT systems to the Hallo Healthcare Group on 6 April 2023.
“It is industry standard for retailers to share anonymised information with social media partners, in our case as set out in LloydsPharmacy privacy and cookies policies.”
E-surgery did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for TikTok said: “Like other platforms, the TikTok Pixel is used by advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their ads, show ads to users who have visited their website, and help optimise campaigns based on specific signals that advertisers have chosen to send to us.
“Using the TikTok pixel to send us sensitive data, including personal health information, would be a breach of our terms. We are continuously working with our partners to avoid inadvertent transmission of such data.”
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office said it did not comment on specific examples, adding: “Where organisations process individuals’ information in an online space, data protection law applies. Businesses processing individuals’ data for marketing purposes must do so in a way that is fair, lawful and transparent.”