Exposed: BetterHelp

BetterHelp is the largest online therapy platform in the world, connecting approximately 4 million users with licensed therapists through text, video, and phone sessions. The company, a subsidiary of Teladoc Health, was fined $7.8 million by the FTC in March 2023 for sharing sensitive health data with advertising platforms after explicitly promising users that their therapy information would remain private. BetterHelp shared intake questionnaire responses, including information about depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and other mental health conditions, with Facebook, Snapchat, Criteo, and Pinterest for advertising targeting purposes. Users who sought help for deeply personal issues discovered that the platform treated their vulnerability as a commodity, using their mental health data to build lookalike audiences and retargeting campaigns. The FTC found that BetterHelp instructed its advertising platforms to use the health data for targeted advertising and failed to obtain proper consent. Despite marketing itself as a safe space for mental health support, the company embedded tracking pixels from seven different advertising companies in its assessment intake flow. The FTC order required BetterHelp to obtain affirmative express consent before disclosing health data and prohibited the company from sharing health data for advertising purposes. BetterHelp paid the fine but did not admit wrongdoing, and the $7.8 million represents a fraction of its annual revenue, raising questions about whether regulatory penalties are sufficient deterrents.