Facebook halts plan to provide user data for medical research

Facebook has halted a project to share data with medical authorities in the United States. Instead, the company wants to focus on measures it has taken in response to the privacy scandal surrounding data company Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook was in talks with, among others, Stanford Medical School and the American College of Cardiology to exchange data about users with medical professionals. The intention was that, in addition to patient data, the doctors could also use profile data that Facebook had collected. The project was intended to give scientists more insight into social and economic factors that contribute to certain disorders. As a result, the doctors wanted to try to reduce the number of heart diseases, for example.

The social network would anonymize the data, but by hashing scientists still wanted to be able to match the profiles with patient data, CNBC reports. Hashing is a cryptographic way of making data unreadable. By comparing the outcome of the encryption, it is possible to determine whether it concerns people with the same name. Facebook and the College of Cardiology have confirmed the existence and discontinuation of the project.

The project was still in the planning stages and Facebook had not yet shared any data with the medical institutions. The company has halted the project due to the privacy scandal surrounding Cambridge Analytica. That scandal is about the protection and misuse of personal data of Facebook users.