If you were seeking online therapy from 2017 to 2021\u2014and a lot of people were\u2014chances are good that you found your way to BetterHelp, which today describes itself as the world\u2019s largest online-therapy purveyor, with more than 2 million users. Once you were there, after a few clicks, you would have completed a form\u2014an intake questionnaire, not unlike the paper one you\u2019d fill out at any therapist\u2019s office: Are you new to therapy? Are you taking any medications? Having problems with intimacy? Experiencing overwhelming sadness? Thinking of hurting yourself? BetterHelp would have asked you if you were religious, if you were LGBTQ, if you were a teenager. These questions were just meant to match you with the best counselor for your needs, small text would have assured you. Your information would remain private.
Except BetterHelp isn\u2019t exactly a therapist\u2019s office, and your information may not have been completely private. In fact, according to a complaint brought by federal regulators, for years, BetterHelp was sharing user data\u2014including email addresses, IP addresses, and questionnaire answers\u2014with third parties, including Facebook and Snapchat, for the purposes of targeting ads for its services. It was also, according to the Federal Trade Commission, poorly regulating what those third parties did with users\u2019 data once they got them. In July, the company finalized a settlement with the FTC and agreed to refund $7.8 million to consumers whose privacy regulators claimed had been compromised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n