MedStar Defeats Bid to Revive Online Tracker Privacy Class Suit

MedStar Health Inc. convinced a Maryland appellate court that its win over a class suit challenging its use of online trackers was proper.

The lawsuit alleged that MedStar’s use of Meta Platforms’ and Google’s tracking tools on its patient portal was a violation of the Maryland Electronic Surveillance Act. But the Appellate Court of Maryland said in an unpublished opinion that the wiretap statute doesn’t concern the transmissions made to Meta and Google.

The data sent to the tech companies included the fact that the plaintiff logged in, a generic URL string, an anonymized IP address, and cookie values that ...