A telehealth company that New York City paid $26 million to provide free online therapy to teens was leaking data about who visited the website to TikTok, Meta, Snap, and other social media companies that the city is currently suing for harming teen mental health, according to a coalition of privacy advocates.
In a series of letters sent to New York City officials, the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, AI for Families, and the New York Civil Liberties Union say they identified a wide array of online tracking pixels on the special landing page for NYC Teenspace, a service built by Talkspace. Pixels are snippets of code that collect information about who visits a website so that platforms can retarget people with content and advertisements related to their web browsing.