United States of America: Issued ruling in FTC investigation into Premom App (Easy Healthcare Corporation) prohibiting the sharing of health data for advertising purposes

On 17 May 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued its ruling in the investigation into Premom App, owned by Easy Healthcare Corporation, compliance with the Health Breach Notification Rule. The FTC stated that sensitive consumer data was disclosed to third parties, including China-based firms, AppsFlyer and Google, for advertising purposes. The FTC alleged that Premom App shared data on sexual and reproductive health, parental and pregnancy status, social media account information, geolocation information, and information about mobile devices and Wi-Fi networks, enabling consumer identification. The FTC stated that Premom App failed to obtain consent to share the data, stated it would not share the data without consent and did not notify the consumers about the data disclosure. The FTC imposed a civil penalty of USD 100'000, a ban on sharing any consumer data for advertising purposes with third parties, and required Premom App to obtain consumer consent before sharing their data for other purposes. The FTC order outlining the sanctions has to be approved by the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.