Browse excerpts in reverse chronological order, or jump to 2018, 2017, 2016.
2019:
The New Target That Enables Ransomware Hackers to Paralyze Dozens of Towns and Businesses at Once
On July 3, employees at Arbor Dental in Longview, Washington, noticed glitches in their computers and couldn’t view X-rays. Arbor was one of dozens of dental clinics in Oregon and Washington stymied by a ransomware attack that disrupted their business and blocked access to patients’ records. But the hackers didn’t... Read More>>
Millions of Americans’ Medical Images and Data Are Available on the Internet. Anyone Can Take a Peek
Medical images and health data belonging to millions of Americans, including X-rays, MRIs and CT scans, are sitting unprotected on the internet and available to anyone with basic computer expertise. The records cover more than... Read More>>
The Extortion Economy: How Insurance Companies Are Fueling a Rise in Ransomware Attacks
On June 24, the mayor and council of Lake City, Florida, gathered in an emergency session to decide how to resolve a ransomware attack that had locked the city’s computer files for the preceding fortnight. Following the Pledge of Allegiance, Mayor Stephen Witt led an invocation. “Our heavenly father,” Witt said, “we ask for your guidance today, that we do what’s best for our city and our community.” Witt and the council members also sought guidance from... Read More>>
How Trump’s Political Appointees Overruled Tougher Settlements With Big Banks
Since Donald Trump’s election, federal white-collar enforcement has taken a big hit. Fines and settlements against corporations have plummeted. Prosecutions of individuals are falling to record lows. But just how these fines and settlements came to be slashed is less well understood. Two settlements with giant banks over financial crisis-era misdeeds provide... Read More>>
How a Top Chicken Company Cut Off Black Farmers, One by One
After years of working as a sheriff’s deputy and a car dealership manager, John Ingrum used his savings to buy a farm some 50 miles east of Jackson, Mississippi. He planned to raise horses on the land and leave the property to his son. The farm, named Lovin’ Acres, came with a few chicken houses, which didn’t really interest Ingrum. But then a man showed up from Koch Foods... Read More>>
What Can Be Done Right Now to Stop a Basic Source of Health Care Fraud
In our story about the convicted health care con man David Williams, we detailed how the Texas personal trainer made off with millions by billing some of the nation’s largest health insurers as if he were a doctor providing medical services. Williams cannily exploited... Read More>>
Health Insurers Make It Easy for Scammers to Steal Millions. Who Pays? You
Ever since her 14-year marriage imploded in financial chaos and a protective order, Amy Lankford had kept a wary eye on her ex, David Williams. Williams, then 51, with the beefy body of a former wrestler gone slightly to seed, was always working the angles, looking for shortcuts to success and mostly stumbling. During their marriage, Lankford had been forced to... Read More>>
Low-Wage Workers Are Being Sued for Unpaid Medical Bills by a Nonprofit Christian Hospital That Employs Them
Memphis, Tennessee -- This year, a Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare housekeeper left her job just three hours into her shift and caught a bus to Shelby County General Sessions Court. Wearing her black and gray uniform, she had a different kind of appointment with her employer: The hospital was suing her for... Read More>>
Digital Jail: How Electronic Monitoring Drives Defendants Into Debt
On Oct. 12, 2018, Daehaun White walked free, or so he thought. A guard handed him shoelaces and the $19 that had been in his pocket at the time of his booking, along with a letter from his public defender. The lanky 19-year-old had been sitting for almost a month in... Read More>>
Fracking Companies Lost on Trespassing, but a Court Just Gave Them a Different Win
A week after the West Virginia Supreme Court unanimously upheld the property rights of landowners battling one natural gas giant, the same court tossed out a challenge filed by another group of landowners against a different natural gas company. Read More>>
Court to Big Fracking Company: Trespassing Still Exists — Even For You
Seven years ago this month, Beth Crowder and David Wentz told natural gas giant EQT Corp. that it did not have permission to come onto their West Virginia farm to drill for the natural gas beneath neighboring properties. EQT had a lease that entitled the company to the gas directly beneath their farm, but it also wanted... Read more>>
Behind the Scenes, Health Insurers Use Cash and Gifts to Sway Which Benefits Employers Choose
The pitches to the health insurance brokers are tantalizing. “Set sail for Bermuda,” says insurance giant Cigna, offering top-selling brokers five days at one of the island’s luxury resorts. Health Net of California’s pitch is not subtle: A smiling woman in a business suit rides a giant... Read More>>
Sackler Embraced Plan to Conceal OxyContin’s Strength From Doctors, Sealed Testimony Shows
In May 1997, the year after Purdue Pharma launched OxyContin, its head of sales and marketing sought input on a key decision from Dr. Richard Sackler, a member of the billionaire family that founded and controls the company. Michael Friedman told Sackler that he didn’t want to correct the false impression... Read More>>
Large Natural Gas Producer to Pay West Virginia Plaintiffs $53.5 Million to Settle Royalty Dispute
The second-largest natural gas producer in West Virginia will pay $53.5 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged the company was cheating thousands of state residents and businesses by shorting them on gas royalty payments, according to terms of the deal unsealed in court... Read More>>
Ex-IBM Executive Says She Was Told Not to Disclose Names of Employees Over Age 50 Who’d Been Laid Off
In sworn testimony filed recently as part of a class-action lawsuit against IBM, a former executive says she was ordered not to comply with a federal agency’s request that the company disclose the names of employees over 50 who’d been laid off from her business unit. Catherine A. Rodgers, a vice president who was then IBM’s senior executive in Nevada, cited... Read More>>
If You're Over 50, Chances Are The Decision To Leave a Job Won't Be Yours
Tom Steckel hunched over a laptop in the overheated basement of the state Capitol building in Pierre, South Dakota, early last week, trying to figure out how a newly awarded benefit claims contract will make it easier for him do his job. Steckel is South Dakota’s director of employee benefits. His department administers programs that help the state’s 13,500 public employees pay for health care and prepare for retirement. It’s steady work and, for that, Steckel, 62, is grateful. After turning 50, he was... Read More>>
2018:
Your Medical Devices Are Not Keeping Your Health Data to Themselves
Medical devices are gathering more and more data from their users, whether it’s their heart rates, sleep patterns or the number of steps taken in a day. Insurers and medical device makers say such data can be used to vastly improve health care. But the data that’s generated can also be used in ways that patients don’t necessarily expect... Read More>>
You Snooze, You Lose: Insurers Make The Old Adage Literally True
Last March, Tony Schmidt discovered something unsettling about the machine that helps him breathe at night. Without his knowledge, it was spying on him. From his bedside, the device was tracking when he was using it and sending the information not just to his doctor, but to the maker of the machine, to the... Read More>>
Aging Machines, Crowds, Humidity: Problems at the Polls Were Mundane but Widespread
If the defining risk of Election Day 2016 was a foreign meddling, 2018’s seems to have been a domestic overload. High turnout across the country threw existing problems — aging machines, poorly trained poll workers and a hot political landscape — into... Read More>>
The Overlooked Weak Link in Election Security
More than one-third of counties that are overseeing elections in some of the most contested congressional races this November run email systems that could make it easy for hackers to log in and steal potentially sensitive information. A ProPublica survey found... Read More>>
A Free Press Works for All of Us
ProPublica does not have an editorial page, and we have never advocated for a particular policy to address the wrongs our journalism exposes. But from the very beginning of our work more than a decade ago, we have benefited enormously from the traditions and laws that protect free speech. And... Read More>>
How the Trump Administration Went Easy on Small-Town Police Abuses
On a chilly morning in December 2016, 12-year-old Bobby Lewis found himself sitting in a little room at the police station in Ville Platte, a town of 7,300 in southern Louisiana. He wasn’t sure exactly how long it had been, but the detective grilling him... Read More>>
No, a Teen Did Not Hack a State Election
Headlines from Def Con, a hacking conference held this month in Las Vegas, might have left some thinking that infiltrating state election websites and affecting the 2018 midterm results would be child’s play. Articles reported that... Read More>>
Fund Meant to Protect Elections May Be Too Little, Too Late
The Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the government agency charged with distributing federal funds to support elections, released a report two weeks ago detailing how each state plans to spend a total of $380 million in grants allocated... Read More>>
How the Case for Voter Fraud Was Tested — and Utterly Failed
In the end, the decision seemed inevitable. After a seven-day trial in Kansas City federal court in March, in which Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach needed to be tutored on basic trial procedure by the judge and was found in contempt for his “willful failure” to obey a ruling, even he knew... Read More>>
Health Insurers Are Vacuuming Up Details About You — And It Could Raise Your Rates
To an outsider, the fancy booths at last month’s health insurance industry gathering in San Diego aren’t very compelling. A handful of companies pitching “lifestyle” data and salespeople touting jargony phrases like “social determinants of health.” But dig deeper and the implications of what they’re selling might give many patients pause: A future in which everything you... Read More>>
New Jersey to Suspend Prominent Psychologist for Failing to Protect Patient Privacy
A prominent New Jersey psychologist is facing the suspension of his license after state officials concluded that he failed to keep details of mental health diagnoses and treatments confidential when he sued his patients over unpaid bills. The state Board of Psychological Examiners upheld... Read More>>
Facebook’s Screening for Political Ads Nabs News Sites Instead of Politicians
One ad couldn’t have been more obviously political. Targeted to people aged 18 and older, it urged them to “vote YES” on June 5 on a ballot proposition to issue bonds for schools in a district near San Francisco. Yet it showed up in users’ news feeds without the “paid for by” disclaimer required for political ads under Facebook’s new policy designed... Read More>>
Why Your Health Insurer Doesn’t Care About Your Big Bills
Michael Frank ran his finger down his medical bill, studying the charges and pausing in disbelief. The numbers didn’t make sense. His recovery from a partial hip replacement had been difficult. He’d iced and elevated his leg for weeks. He’d pushed his 49-year-old body, limping and wincing, through more than a dozen physical therapy sessions. The last thing he needed was a botched bill. Read More >>
What Facebook’s New Political Ad System Misses
Facebook’s long-awaited change in how it handles political advertisements is only a first step toward addressing a problem intrinsic to a social network built on the viral sharing of user posts. The company’s approach, a searchable database of political ads and their sponsors, depends on... Read More >>
Federal Watchdog Launches Investigation of Age Bias at IBM
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has launched a nationwide probe of age bias at IBM in the wake of a ProPublica investigation showing the company has flouted or outflanked laws intended to protect older workers from discrimination. More than five years after... Read More >>
New Commissioner Says FTC Should Get Tough on Companies Like Facebook and Google
Declaring that "the credibility of law enforcement and regulatory agencies has been undermined by the real or perceived lax treatment of repeat offenders," newly installed Democratic Federal Trade Commissioner Rohit Chopra is calling for much more serious penalties for repeat corporate offenders. Read More >>
How to Wrestle Your Data From Data Brokers, Silicon Valley — and Cambridge Analytica
Cambridge Analytica thinks that I’m a "Very Unlikely Republican." Another political data firm, ALC Digital, has concluded I’m a "Socially Conservative," Republican, “Boomer Voter.” In fact, I’m a 27-year-old millennial with no set party allegiance. For all the fanfare, the burgeoning field of mining our personal data remains an inexact art. One thing is certain: My personal data, and likely yours, is in... Read More >>
4 Ways To Fix Facebook
Gathered in a Washington, D.C., ballroom last Thursday for their annual “tech prom,” hundreds of tech industry lobbyists and policy makers applauded politely as announcers read out the names of the event’s sponsors. But the room fell silent when “Facebook” was... Read More >>
Fair Housing Groups Sue Facebook for Allowing Discrimination in Housing Ads
In February 2017, in response to a ProPublica investigation, Facebook pledged to crack down on efforts by advertisers of rental housing to discriminate against tenants based on race, disability, gender and other characteristics. But a new lawsuit alleges that the world’s largest social network still allows... Read More >>
How the Crowd Led ProPublica to Investigate IBM
On March 22, we reported that over the past five years IBM has been removing older U.S. employees from their jobs, replacing some with younger, less experienced, lower-paid American workers and moving many other jobs overseas. We’ve got documentation and details — most of which are the direct result of... Read More >>
I Approved This Facebook Message — But You Don’t Know That
Hundreds of federal political ads — including those from major players such as the Democratic National Committee and the Donald Trump 2020 campaign — are running on Facebook without adequate disclaimer language, likely violating Federal Election Commission (FEC) rules, a review by ProPublica has found. An FEC opinion in December clarified... Read More >>
Facebook’s Experiment in Ad Transparency Is Like Playing Hide And Seek
Shortly before a Toronto City Council vote in December on whether to tighten regulation of short-term rental companies, an entity called Airbnb Citizen ran an ad on the Facebook news feeds of a selected audience, including Toronto residents over the age of 26 who listen to Canadian public radio. The ad featured... Read More >>
2017:
What We Discovered During a Year of Documenting Hate
The days after Election Day last year seemed to bring with them a rise in hate crimes and bias incidents. Reports filled social media and appeared in local news. There were the letters calling for the genocide of Muslims that were sent to Islamic centers from California to Ohio. And the swastikas that were scrawled on buildings around the country. In Florida, “colored” and “whites only” signs were posted over water fountains at a high school. A man assaulted a Hispanic woman in San Francisco, telling her “No Latinos here.” But were these horrible events indicative of an increase in crimes and incidents themselves, or did the reports simply reflect an increased awareness and willingness... Read More >>
Dozens Of Companies Are Using Facebook To Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
A few weeks ago, Verizon placed an ad on Facebook to recruit applicants for a unit focused on financial planning and analysis. The ad showed a smiling, millennial-aged woman seated at a computer and promised that new hires could look forward to a rewarding career in which they would be "more than just a number." Some relevant numbers were not immediately evident. The promotion was set... Read More >>
Hate Crime Training for Police Is Often Inadequate, Sometimes Nonexistent
To become a police officer in the U.S., one almost always has to enroll in an academy for some basic training. The typical academy session lasts 25 weeks, but state governments — which oversee police academies for local and state law enforcement officers — have wide latitude when it comes to choosing the subjects that will be taught in the classrooms. How to properly identify and investigate hate crimes does not... Read More >>
Governors and Federal Agencies Are Blocking Nearly 1,300 Accounts on Facebook and Twitter
Amanda Farber still doesn’t know why Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan blocked her from his Facebook group. A resident of Bethesda and full-time parent and volunteer, Farber identifies as a Democrat but voted for the Republican Hogan in 2014. Farber says she doesn’t post on her representatives’ pages often. But earlier this year, she said she wrote on the governor’s Facebook page, asking him to oppose... Read More >>
Facebook to Temporarily Block Advertisers From Excluding Audiences by Race
Facebook said it would temporarily stop advertisers from being able to exclude viewers by race while it studies the use of its ad targeting system. "Until we can better ensure that our tools will not be used inappropriately, we are disabling the option that permits advertisers to exclude multicultural affinity segments from the audience for their ads," Facebook Sheryl Sandberg wrote... Read More >>
Some U.S. Hospitals Don’t Put Americans First for Liver Transplants
Earlier this fall, a leader of the busiest hospital for organ transplants in New York state — where livers are particularly scarce — pleaded for fairer treatment for ailing New Yorkers. "Patients in equal need of a liver transplant should not have to wait and suffer differently because of the U.S. state where they reside,” wrote Dr. Herbert Pardes, former chief executive and now executive vice president of the board at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. But Pardes left out his hospital’s own contribution to the shortage... Read More >>
What We Do and Don’t Know About Facebook’s New Political Ad Transparency Initiative
On Thursday September 21, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced several steps to make political ads on the world’s largest social network more transparent. The changes follow Facebook’s acknowledgment... Read More >>
Without Fanfare, Equifax Makes Bankruptcy Change That Affects Hundreds of Thousands
For what appears to be decades, the credit rating agency Equifax has quietly layered three more years of tarnish on the credit histories of hundreds of thousands of people who had filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 13. While its competitors... Read More >>
Facebook Enabled Advertisers to Reach ‘Jew Haters’
Want to market Nazi memorabilia, or recruit marchers for a far-right rally? Facebook’s self-service ad-buying platform had the right audience for you. Until last week... Read More >>
Experts Say the Use of Private Email by Trump’s Voter Fraud Commission Isn’t Legal
President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission came under fire earlier this month when a lawsuit and media reports revealed that the commissioners were using private... Read More >>
What We Know -- And Don't Know -- About Hate Crimes in America
"Go home. We need Americans here!" white supremacist Jeremy Joseph Christian yelled at two black women -- one wearing a hijab -- on a train in Portland, Oregon, in May. According to news reports, when several commuters tried to intervene, he went on a... Read More >>
Despite Disavowals, Leading Tech Companies Help Extremist Sites Monetize Hate
Because of its "extreme hostility toward Muslims," the website Jihadwatch.org is considered an active hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. The views of the site's director, Robert Spencer, on Islam led the British Home Office to... Read More >>
'If You Hemorrhage, Don't Clean Up': Advice From Mothers Who Almost Died
Four days after Marie McCausland delivered her first child in May, she knew something was very wrong. She had intense pain in her upper chest, her blood pressure was rising, and she was so swollen that she barely recognized herself in the mirror. As she curled up in bed that evening, a scary thought flickered through her exhausted brain: "If I go to sleep right now, I don't know if I'm gonna be waking up." What she didn't have was... Read More >>
The Myth Of Drug Expiration Dates
The box of prescription drugs had been forgotten in a back closet of a retail pharmacy for so long that some of the pills predated the 1969 moon landing. Most were 30 to 40 years past their expiration dates -- possibly toxic, probably worthless. But to Lee Cantrell, who helps run the California Poison Control System, the cache was an opportunity to... Read More >>
Presidential Commission Demands Massive Amounts of State Voter Data
On June 28, all 50 states were sent letters from Kris Kobach -- vice chair for the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity -- requesting information on voter fraud, election security and copies of every state's voter roll data. The letter asked state officials to deliver the data within two weeks, and says that all information turned over to... Read More >>
Facebook's Secret Censorship Rules Protect White Men from Hate Speech But Not Black Children
In the wake of a terrorist attack in London earlier this month, a U.S. congressman wrote a Facebook post in which he called for the slaughter of "radicalized" Muslims. "Hunt them, identify them, and kill them," declared U.S. Rep. Clay... Read More >>
How Two Common Medications Became One $455 Million Specialty Pill
Everything happened so fast as I walked out of the doctor's exam room. I was tucking in my shirt and wondering if I'd asked all my questions about my injured shoulder when one of the doctor's assistants handed me two... Read More >>
Trump Administration Quietly Rolls Back Civil Rights Efforts Across Federal Government
For decades, the Department of Justice has used court-enforced agreements to protect civil rights, successfully desegregating school systems, reforming police departments, ensuring access for the disabled and defending the religious. Now, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions... Read More >>
Trump Is Not the Only One Blocking Constituents on Twitter
As President Donald Trump faces criticism for blocking users on his Twitter account, people across the country say they, too, have been cut off by elected officials at all levels of government after voicing dissent on social media. In Arizona, a disabled Army veteran grew so angry when... Read More >>
3 Strategies To Defend GOP Health Bill: Euphemisms, False Statements and Deleted Comments
Earlier this month, a day after the House of Representatives passed a bill to repeal and replace major parts of the Affordable Care Act, Ashleigh Morley visited her congressman's Facebook page to voice her dismay. "Your vote yesterday was unthinkably irresponsible and does not begin to account for... Read More >>
Any Half-Decent Hacker Could Break Into Mar-a-Lago
Two weeks ago, on a sparkling spring morning, we went trawling along Florida's coastal waterway. But not for fish. We parked a 17-foot motor boat in a lagoon about 800 feet from the back lawn of The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach and pointed a 2-foot wireless antenna that resembled a potato gun toward the club. Within a minute, we spotted... Read More >>
America's Other Drug Problem
Every week in Des Moines, Iowa, the employees of a small nonprofit collect bins of unexpired prescription drugs tossed out by nursing homes after residents died, moved out or no longer needed them. The drugs are given to patients who couldn't otherwise afford them. But travel 1,000 miles east to Long Island, New York, and you'll find... Read More >>
For-Profit School Chain Camelot Suffers Setback Following Abuse Allegations
The Muscogee County School Board in Columbus, Georgia, dealt another blow to embattled Camelot Education when it voted Monday night on April 10 to delay for three months a decision on whether to hire the company to run its alternative education programs. The delay in awarding the $6.4 million annual contract comes in the wake of... Read More >>
We Fact-Checked Lawmakers' Letters To Constituents on Health Care
When Louisiana resident Andrea Mongler wrote to her senator, Bill Cassidy, in support of the Affordable Care Act, she wasn't surprised to get an email back detailing the law's faults. Cassidy, a Republican who is also a physician, has been... Read More >>
Can Customs and Border Officials Search Your Phone? These Are Your Rights
A NASA scientist heading home to the U.S. said he was detained in January at a Houston airport, where Customs and Border Protection officers pressured him for access to his work phone and its potentially sensitive contents. Last month, CBP agents checked the identification of passengers leaving a domestic flight at New York's... Read More >>
Facebook Doesn't Tell Users Everything it Really Knows About Them
Facebook has long let users see all sorts of things the site knows about them, like whether they enjoy soccer, have recently moved, or like Melania Trump. But the tech giant gives users little indication that it buys far more sensitive data about them, including... Read More >>
Here's Another Way Wells Fargo Took Advantage Of Customers
Wells Fargo, the largest mortgage lender in the country, portrays itself as a stalwart bank that puts customers first. That reputation shattered in September, when it was fined $185 million for illegally opening as many as 2 million deposit and credit-card accounts without customers' knowledge. Now four former Wells Fargo employees in the Los Angeles region say the bank had another... Read More >>
Trump's Treasury Pick Excelled at Kicking Elderly People Out of Their Homes
In 2015, OneWest Bank moved to foreclose on John Yang, an 80-year-old Korean immigrant living in Orange Park, Florida, a small suburb of Jacksonville. The bank believed he wasn't living in his home, violating the terms of its loan. It dispatched an agent to give him legal notification of the foreclosure. Where did the bank find him? At the... Read More >>
2016:
EPA Concludes Fracking a Threat to U.S. Water Supplies
Starting in 2008, ProPublica published stories that found hydraulic fracking had damaged drinking water supplies across the country. The reporting examined how fracking in some cases had dislodged methane, which then seeped into water supplies. In other instances, the reporting showed that chemicals related to oil and gas production through fracking were... Read More >>
There's No Evidence Our Election Was Rigged
President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter on Sunday to claim that he would have won the popular vote "if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." There is no evidence that millions of people voted illegally. If there were... Read More >>
Facebook Says it Will Stop Allowing Some Advertisers to Exclude Users by Race
Facing a wave of criticism for allowing advertisers to exclude anyone with an "affinity" for African-American, Asian-American or Hispanic people from seeing ads, Facebook said it would build an automated system that would let it better spot ads that discriminate illegally. Federal law prohibits... Read More >>
Facebook Lets Advertisers Exclude Users by Race
Imagine if, during the Jim Crow era, a newspaper offered advertisers the option of placing ads only in copies that went to white readers. That's basically what Facebook... Read More >>
Disenfranchised By Bad Design
This November 8, even if you manage to be registered in time and have the right identification, there is something else that could stop you from exercising your right to vote. The ballot. Specifically, the ballot's design. Bad ballot design gained national attention almost 16 years ago when... Read More >>
Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking
When Google bought the advertising network DoubleClick in 2007, Google founder Sergey Brin said that privacy would be the company's "number one priority when we contemplate new kinds of advertising products." And, for nearly a decade, Google did in fact keep DoubleClick's massive database of web-browsing records separate... Read More >>