It’s your data. We used it for change.
Mozilla Rally was a powerful tool that shed light on the insidious ways Big Tech amasses very sensitive, personal information. With the help of data generously donated by the Rally community, we exposed data privacy violations across various industries – catching the attention of U.S. legislators on both sides of the aisle and igniting public and private sector change. Though the Rally project has ended, its collective impact lives on through the valuable insights and understanding provided about the role of data collection and use.
“Rally proved that users can band together to create datasets that force new dialogues about the data economy that affects our lives. Rally‘s continuing impact will be seen in the way people demand transparency into the impact of tech platforms on our society with fit-for-purpose datasets co-created with real people.”
One small browser extension download, one giant leap toward a better internet
-
DEC 14
2022
Senators Question Facebook/Meta, Google, and H&R Block CEO‘s About Leaked Financial Information
-
DEC 13
2022
Sensitive Telehealth Data Sent to Facebook/Meta and Google
-
DEC 1
2022
Department of Health and Human Services
-
NOV 22
2022
Financial Information from Online Tax Filing Sites Sent to Facebook/Meta
-
SEP 19
2022
Congress Questions Facebook/Meta about Possible HIPAA Violations
Meta Faces Mounting Questions from Congress on Health Data Privacy As Hospitals Remove Facebook Tracker [Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA)]
-
JUL 1
2022
Women‘s Abortion Pill Data Sent to Facebook/Meta and Google
-
JUN 23
2022
Attorney General Investigation into Medical Data Harvesting
-
JUN 16
2022
Sensitive Patient Data Sent to Facebook/Meta from 33 Hospitals
-
MAY 12
2022
Department of Education Grilled by Legislators
-
APR 28
2022
FAFSA Website Sends Student Data to Facebook/Meta
-
JAN 10
2022
Facebook/Meta Pixel Hunt with The Markup
-
JAN
2022
Princeton CITP Study: Search Engine Usage and Quality
-
JAN
2022
Stanford Study: Where do People Find Their Local News?
-
JAN
2022
Princeton CITP Study: Misinformation
-
JAN 1
2021
Rally Launches
Rebecca Weiss Starts Rally
“People have been talking about data collection and privacy violations for years. The Rally community and their contributions were able to finally shed light on what this looked like in the real world and move the conversation forward 5-10 years.”
Our impact, in stories:
-
Education
- Applied for Student Aid Online? Facebook Saw You (FAFSA)
- Go read this exposé on how FAFSA got caught sending personal info to Facebook
- Facebook‘s Meta, tracking code, and the student financial aid website
- H.R.2030 - College Transparency Act - Could be affected by the FAFSA story
- Letter from Rp. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) to the Department of Education regarding the willful violation of the privacy of millions of students.
- Follow up letter from Rp. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.)
- Third Letter from Rp. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) to the Department of Education regarding the willful violation of the privacy of millions of students.
-
-
-
Financial
- Tax Filing Websites Have Been Sending Users’ Financial Information to Facebook (H&R Block, Google, Facebook)
- Tax prep websites have been sending sensitive financial data to Facebook
- Tax prep software sent back personal consumer data to Meta and Google, report says
- Major tax-filing sites routinely shared users’ financial info with Facebook
- Meta Has Been Lapping Up Users' Financial Info Sent Directly from Tax Filing Sites
- Facebook Leak Just One Reason Taxpayer Data Sharing Must Stop
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren Questions Tax Filing Companies, Meta, and Google About Sharing of Financial Data
-
Tracking Pixels
- As ‘Like’ Buttons Spread, So Do Facebook’s Tentacles
- It’s Complicated: Facebook’s History of Tracking You
- Facebook Tracking Through Social Plug-ins
- It‘s Complicated: Facebook‘s History of Tracking You
- Facebook Doesn’t Know What It Does With Your Data, Or Where It Goes: Leaked Document
- Meta Pixel Definition
- Privacy Risks with Facebook’s PII-based Targeting: Auditing a Data Broker’s Advertising Interface
- About Advanced Matching for Web
- Written last year (2021) by Facebook privacy engineers on the Ad and Business Product team
- Tracking Pixel PSA
- H. R. 8152 - American Data Privacy and Protection Act - ADPPA
- Mozilla, The Markup Team Up on a Deep Dive Into Meta’s Tracking Infrastructure
- Mozilla Goes on a 'Facebook Pixel Hunt' to See How You're Tracked on the Web
- You Can Help Mozilla Track Facebook While Facebook Is Tracking You
- Help Us Investigate Facebook Pixel Tracking
- In January of this year we kicked off our Pixel Hunt project in collaboration with Mozilla Rally. This project is the first large scale crowdsourced study into how Meta tracks people across the internet using their tracker. Today we are publishing our first story. 🧵
- How We Built a Meta Pixel Inspector
- Facebook’s Pervasive Pixel
- Facebook Pixel Hunt
-
Misinformation
-
Local News/ Democratic Accountability
-
-
Medical
- Facebook Knows a Ton About Your Health. Now They Want to Make Money Off of It.
- Replication Data for "Prevalence of Third-Party Tracking on Abortion Clinic Web Pages"
- Patient survey shows unresolved tension over health data privacy
- Prevalence of Third-Party Tracking on Abortion Clinic Web Pages
- Meta Response to Sen Ossoff Question
- Facebook Is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information from Hospital Websites - HIPAA, Hospital websites
- Some hospitals are giving private data to Facebook
- Report Finds that Facebook Receives Sensitive Patient Information from Hospital Websites
- What is Meta Pixel, the code detected on health system websites in NC and beyond?
- Pixelated: The (Continuous) Great Harvest Of Your Medical Records
- Novant Health Notifies 1.3M Patients of Unauthorized PHI Disclosure Caused By Meta Pixel
- Novant Health notifies patients about possible data breach involving Facebook tracker (MyChart)
- Some Novant Health patients involved in data breach
- 3M Advocate Aurora Health Patients Face PHI Exposure Tied to Tracking Pixels
- Second Health Entity Reports Breach Tied to Meta Pixel Use
- Did Duke Health Violate Privacy by Sharing Patient Data With Facebook?
- ECRI Warns Healthcare Providers About Third-Party Tags Like Meta Pixel
- “Out Of Control”: Dozens of Telehealth Startups Sent Sensitive Health Information to Big Tech Companies
- Meta’s Pixel Can Track Sensitive Medical Information from Users - has INCORRECT link Rally extension
- Use of Online Tracking Technologies by HIPAA Covered Entities and Business Associates
- HHS bulletin clarifies when pixel tracker use may violate HIPAA
- Democratic Leaders Question Meta on Data Privacy Practices
- Senators Have Stopped Embarrassing Themselves at Tech Hearings
- Meta Faces Mounting Questions from Congress on Health Data Privacy As Hospitals Remove Facebook Tracker [Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA)]
- Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) re HIPAA story
- Senator Mark R. Warner (D-VA) re HIPAA story
- Meta Sued Over Claims Patient Data Secretly Sent to Facebook
- Meta Sued For Violating Patient Privacy, Scraping Health Data From Hospitals
- The Attorney General will investigate hospitals that sent patient data to Meta
- Lawmakers ask for investigation into Meta tracking, mining health data of patients
- Meta Faces Another Lawsuit Over Health Data Privacy Practices
- Meta Facing Further Class Action Lawsuit Over Use of Meta Pixel Code on Hospital Websites
- Meta Pixel tool on the University of California San Francisco and Dignity Health, MedStar Health System in Baltimore, Maryland
- Meta’s Pixel Cases Stir Trouble for Health Site Tracking Tools
- Lawsuit alleges Northwestern Memorial gave sensitive patient data to Facebook‘s parent
- Lawsuits and letter from Novant
- Advocate Aurora, WakeMed get served with class action over Meta‘s alleged patient data mining
- WakeMed Class Action Lawsuit
Open sourceforever.
The code for the Rally extension and web platform is available on GitHub. This open source codebase allows anyone to view, modify, and contribute to the development of the Rally project.
“Participating in Rally in the fall of 2022 was an incredible experience. It felt like every other week, we were witnessing business entities and legislation respond to community action in real-time. This fueled the team to innovate new ways to give back to our users and reinforced that when we Rally together, we have the power to affect real change.”