Anti-Choice Group Used Phone Data To Target Planned Parenthood Visitors Nationwide

A national anti-abortion group used cell phone location data to target visitors of Planned Parenthood clinics in 48 states with abortion misinformation, according to an investigation from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

The Veritas Society, a nonprofit created by the Wisconsin Right to Life, used a data broker system called Near Intelligence to target people whose cell phone location data showed they had visited any of the 600 Planned Parenthood reproductive health clinics across the country. Wyden detailed his office’s findings Tuesday in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, urging the FTC to better protect location data.

Wyden’s office found that Veritas Society hired an advertising agency to use Near Intelligence’s website to draw a line around each Planned Parenthood clinic and clinic parking lots. Anyone with a cell phone who stepped into those targeted areas were served social media ads with anti-abortion messaging or abortion misinformation. The senator began investigating Near Intelligence in May 2023 after The Wall Street Journal revealed Veritas Society was peddling abortion misinformation using cell phone data.

The Veritas Society ad campaign ran from late 2019 through the summer of 2022, after the Supreme Court repealed federal abortion protections, according to Wyden’s investigation. The Veritas Society reported that in 2020, in Wisconsin alone, the organization served over 14 million advertisements to people who visited abortion clinics as well as “ads to those devices across the women’s social pages, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat,” according to a web page that has since been removed.

The Wisconsin Right to Life and Near Intelligence did not immediately