Healthline and California AG Agree $1.55M Privacy Settlement

The office of California Attorney General Bob Fonta announced that it had secured the largest consumer privacy settlement in the state’s history against Healthline. While still pending court approval, Healthline Media LLC (Healthline) agreed to the $1.55 million settlement to resolve allegations of improper use of online tracking technology on the Healthline.com website.

The Attorney General’s Office made the announcement on Tuesday, the 1st of July. It comes after a California Department of Justice (DoJ) investigation concluded that Healthline “failed to allow customers to opt out of targeted advertising and shared data with third parties without CCPA-mandated privacy protections.”

On top of the record-breaking payment, the AG also secured strong injunctive terms. For example, Healthline is accused of having violated the “Purpose Limitation Principle” by sending users articles that claim that they may have already been diagnosed with a medical condition. If approved by the court, Healthline will be prohibited from continuing with these types of communications.

Healthline’s other alleged violations include failing to ensure that “advertising contracts contain privacy protections for readers’ data required by the CCPA” as well as using a non-functional “consent banner” that is supposed to allow users to disable cookies. The latter is considered a violation of the Unfair Competition Law.

An added condition of the settlement is that Healthline must address all of these other violations as well as maintain a CCPA-compliance program.

According to the statement, this is Bonta’s fourth enforcement action under the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) — a sign that the office is ramping up its role as a privacy watchdog. While still paling in comparison to similar cases in other jurisdictions — Meta was fined $1.3 billion by the EU while TikTok faced a $379 million fine from Irish regulators — it’s a warning shot regarding the use of California’s digital information.