Marketplace Morning Reports' new Skin in the Game series explores what we can learn about

money and careers from the $300 billion video game industry. Plus, here how an Oakland-based

program helps young people get the skills they need to break into this booming industry.

Listen to Skin in the Game and more from the Marketplace Morning Report wherever you get your

podcasts. Americans' mental health data is up for sale and it's pretty easy to get.

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty-Carrino.

Digital tools like virtual therapy and meditation apps have made mental health care

more accessible. But they've also made data about the people using them more accessible too.

That's what Joanne Kim, an undergraduate student at Duke University, found in a report published

earlier this year. She identified 11 firms willing to sell her highly sensitive health data.

We spoke with Justin Sherman, a senior fellow at Duke School of Public Policy,

who helped oversee the study. He told us how this data ends up on the market.

Most of us, we might use a website or an app to make an appointment with a therapist or to go

to an urgent clinic if we have a sore throat, for example. The reality, unfortunately, is that

a lot of that health data is not protected. So HIPAA, which people refer to as the US Health

Privacy Law, it's almost 30 years old and a lot of these technologies that are around today

were not in existence back then or were not as prevalent back then. And so what happens is that

there are some entities covered by HIPAA, like an emergency room, right? If you go in with something,

they can't tweet it out. They can't go sell it on the street corner. But there are plenty of apps

of data brokers, of social media companies, of ad tech firms, who are not covered. And so

you might use an app or a company thinking that your health data is safe. When in reality,

they can turn around and completely legally sell that data on the open market.

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