Facebook wants to play doctor with your health data

Facebook finds a new way to make us sick. I'm Bridget Carey, and this is your CNET update. [MUSIC] Facebook makes money by collecting data about us and then selling ads targeting us based on that data. And Facebook actually tracks more than you may realize. A research paper revealed that Facebook can record every key you type when writing a message, even if you don't send or post that message. I'm sure you remember a scandal a few months ago, when Facebook was found to be conducting emotional experiments on users without consent. The network is only now responding to the issue. Saying that it will still experiment, but future research will be reviewed more closely. How comforting. It doesn't stop there. Now Reuters reports that Facebook wants to collect your health data and the network is researching ways it can get into the field of healthcare. Some employees are looking into creating online support communities that would connect people suffering with the same illnesses. There would also be preventative care applications that would help improve our lifestyles. But how far will this go? Now if you couldn't tell already from my voice. I am a bit stuffed up and congested with a cold. But I don't need Facebook stealing my feed with a bunch of ads for cold medicine and sharing that information with pharmaceutical companies and I don't need them lumping me into some database of sick people. And what about more serious conditions like cancer? If Facebook collects our health status into large databases. This could get dangerous when you start to think about privacy and how it could influence health insurance. Facebook is mutating into something that goes far beyond a communication tool. It's hard to trust companies with more and more data when there's a new hack reported every week. JPMorgan Chase revealed that 76 million households and 7 million small businesses were compromised in the data breach. That makes it one of the largest corporate hacks ever reported. JP Morgan, the largest bank in the US, says the information breach included customer names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, but it seems the hackers did not get account numbers. Passwords, birth dates, or social security numbers. So while hackers keep trying to crack our bank accounts, how about we seaway into news about saving money. You know Groupon as a service for discounts on restaurants and activities but now Groupon is expanding into discounts at the grocery store. Groupons new Snap app is sort of like reverse couponing. It tells you which items have discounts. And you can buy them from any store. And then you snap a photo of your receipt. After you collect $20 worth of discounts you get the money sent to you in a lump sum. Like a rebate. unfortunately they didn't have any cold medicine discounts for me. But I can save money on Lysol. That's your tech news update, you can get more details on these stories at cnet.com. From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey. [MUSIC]