I’m back with the latest decision that could reshape how companies handle digital health information. A federal court in the Western District of Washington has largely greenlit a lawsuit challenging Costco’s use of Meta’s tracking pixel on its pharmacy website. Don’t miss my last blog on medical health data— check it out here for more insights! In Castillo v.
Costco Wholesale Corp. , No. 2:23-cv-01548-JHC, 2024 U.
S. Dist. LEXIS 207197 (W.
D. Wash. Nov.
14, 2024), the Court addresses pressing questions about privacy in the digital age: When does tracking your prescription searches become a privacy violation? And what happens when your pharmacy shares your data with Facebook? The case prescribes a closer look at Costco’s installation of Meta’s tracking pixel on its pharmacy website. Plaintiffs and several other Costco pharmacy customers alleged that when they searched for prescriptions, transferred medications between pharmacies, and reviewed insurance co-pay information, Costco secretly collected and shared their data through Meta’s tracking pixel. The Pixel tracks users’ interactions by recording detailed URLs triggered each time a customer enters information and can link this data to users’ Facebook identities—even for those without Facebook accounts, storing it until they potentially create one in the future.
So what’s the deal here? Well, before diving into the substantive claims, the Court addressed a pivotal preliminary issue: whether Washington la.