600 Planned Parenthood Locations Tracked for Anti-Abortion Ads, Senator Says

Charisma Madarang
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Data broker company Near Intelligence has been accused of tracking user visits to 600 Planned Parenthood locations and handing over that data to an anti-abortion ad campaign.

In a letter from Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) to the Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission, Wyden demanded that federal regulators ensure that all location and device data gathered by Near is deleted and that the SEC investigate whether the company made misleading statements to investors in its filings.

“Near is a scandal-plagued location data broker, which sells personal information revealing where Americans have been, and consequently, the sensitive places they have visited,” Wyden wrote in his letter.

Back in May, The Wall Street Journal reported that anti-abortion group Veritas Society (which was established by parent organization, Wisconsin Right to Life) used geo-location smartphone data to send targeted ads on social media to people who had visited Planned Parenthood clinics. “Took the first pill at the clinic? It may not be too late to save your pregnancy,” read one ad on social-media platforms such as Facebook, per WSJ.

Veritas Society reportedly ran the initial campaign from late 2019 and 2020 in Wisconsin, after the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and reversed Roe v. Wade — stripping away the constitutional right to abortion and allowing states to criminalize the procedure.

In response to the report, Wyden’s office began to investigate the data broker and when interviewing Near’s Chief Privacy Officer, Jay Angelo, he confirmed that until the summer of 2022, “the company did not have any technical controls in place to prevent its customers targeting people who visited sensitive facilities, such as reproductive health clinics.”

The chief privacy officer also said that although he had stopped Near’s sale of data about Europeans, which is subject to Europe’s strong privacy law, the company continued to sell location data about Americans. Angelo also “confirmed that the data it sold about Americans was obtained without consent, which is generally the case with data from advertising exchanges,” per the letter.

The senator also alleged that Near mislead investors by claiming in an SEC filing from last August that it had not received any requests for information from Congress since July 2022, despite his office requesting Near for information in May 2023 and communicating via email with the company’s counsel in June 2023.

Wyden is calling on the FTC to block the sale of data collected by Near — which filed for bankruptcy in December and is selling off its business and assets — that could include the information gathered from Planned Parenthood clinics. The senator voiced his concerns on Tuesday in a repost on X, formerly known as Twitter, of a story covering the news.

“If data brokers can help extremists target misinformation to patients at Planned Parenthood, right-wing prosecutors in red states could use that same information to put women in jail,” he warned. “Implementing ironclad protections for Americans’ private health data has never been more urgent.”

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