Security & Privacy in Online Healthcare

With the rapid growth of the telehealth industry following the COVID-19 pandemic, government regulations have struggled to address emerging privacy and ethical concerns. During my senior research at WWU, my group developed a functional telehealth platform but we lacked the time to explore the issues that we uncovered in depth. This paper extends that work by investigating privacy risks, unethical data practices, and user manipulation tactics in online healthcare platforms. It draws from my group's comparative analysis, psychological studies, and real-world lawsuits to highlight gaps in current protections. Finally, it proposes both technical and policy-based solutions to improve transparency, user control, and data security in future telehealth systems.