TL;DR
A medical booking site sends the specialty you searched for and the time of your appointment straight to social platforms, and the path you take to care is itself private information.
Here is something you probably would not guess: in Latin America and Europe, the site people use to find a doctor hands your search, your chosen specialist and your appointment time to TikTok, Google and LinkedIn.
It starts at the first keystroke
The site is Doctoralia, the ZocDoc of its markets, operating in 13 countries and booking 25 million appointments a month. Reporters working with a Brazilian investigative outlet examined its traffic in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and elsewhere.
The tracking code fires before you type a name or an email, and often pins you to a unique ID. Search for a gynecologist in Sao Paulo and the term goes to Google's marketing platform. Book a dermatologist in Cartagena and the doctor's name and the appointment slot go to LinkedIn. Book anyone in Bogota and it is shared with TikTok.
No diagnosis written down still says plenty
An anonymous Brazilian gynecologist points out that the route you take to care leaks a lot on its own: a search for gynecology, obstetrics or fertility may mean someone is trying to conceive, is already pregnant, is investigating infertility, is choosing contraception, or is worried after unsafe sex.
Inference is not diagnosis, she says, but the confidentiality patients expect from a doctor should follow them online.
Brazil's privacy law gives health data special protection, and experts say this tracking may well break it. The national medical council counters that booking an appointment involves no medical confidentiality. The agency regulating private insurance disagrees outright: the specialty you looked up reveals something about your health.
The platforms say they do not want it. It keeps arriving
Doctoralia's parent company says the tools only measure its own ad campaigns, that it does not sell patient data, and that it will run a detailed technical and legal review.
Google and LinkedIn both say strict policies bar health data. TikTok did not reply.
Yet this has been running for four years. The same reporters have traced pixels from tax filing services, the federal student aid system, major hospitals and even abortion pill providers. Each time the fix arrives only after lawsuits, lawmakers' questions and hospitals rewriting their code overnight.
Turning the switch off in that cookie pop-up is harder than it sounds. Ignore it, and everything stays on.
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