Hims FTC lawsuit challenges privacy, billing and subscription practices
The FTC says Hims misused sensitive health data and enrolled customers in recurring plans; the telehealth company denies the claims.
By Rafael Ortiz · Fintech Correspondent
· 3 min read
The Hims FTC lawsuit filed Wednesday puts the telehealth company’s privacy, billing and subscription practices under federal and local regulatory scrutiny. The Federal Trade Commission said Hims & Hers shared sensitive consumer information with advertising platforms while marketing its services as private, and the company’s shares fell about 12% after news of the case, according to PYMNTS.
The FTC was joined by Utah and Los Angeles County on behalf of California, according to the agency’s press release. Regulators allege that Hims charged many consumers for prescription treatments before they had a chance to speak with a provider, placed them into recurring plans and made cancellation difficult.
Hims rejected the allegations in a company statement and said it would defend itself “vigorously.” The company said information patients provide to healthcare professionals is used only to deliver care, and that its privacy policy gives customers choices over how their data is used. Hims also said the FTC ignored evidence produced during a nearly three-year investigation and was seeking to expand the law beyond established telehealth practices.
What is the Hims FTC lawsuit about?
The FTC’s complaint centers on the full path a consumer takes through Hims’ service: online intake, payment, medical review, prescription selection, recurring billing, data sharing and cancellation. The agency says those steps cannot be treated as separate compliance issues when consumers experience them as a single healthcare transaction.
According to the complaint, Hims asked consumers to complete online forms and enter payment details while telling them they could connect with a medical provider to determine the right treatment. Regulators allege many consumers were instead charged and enrolled in repeat prescription plans soon after submitting forms, before receiving the consultation they expected or reviewing the selected treatment.
The FTC also alleged that Hims sent customer lists and website activity through third-party tracking tools to Meta, Snap and other companies. Those website “events” can indicate that a person visited or acted on pages tied to issues such as weight loss, sexual health or hair loss, even if the data is not a medical record or prescription.
That allegation highlights a compliance issue for digital health companies that rely on consumer technology tools. A clinical database may have controls around medical records, while advertising pixels, software development kits or analytics integrations elsewhere in the system can still generate sensitive inferences about a user’s health interests.
Why subscriptions are part of the case
Subscriptions are central to the FTC’s claims because recurring plans can turn a one-time health inquiry into an ongoing commercial relationship. In digital healthcare, that model can support repeat medication delivery and more predictable revenue, but regulators are examining whether consumers understand when they are being charged and how to stop future orders.
The FTC alleged that Hims did not clearly disclose when prescriptions would be refilled and built cancellation flows that required customers to pass through several steps before seeing an option labeled “cancel.” The agency is treating billing design and cancellation access as part of the same consumer-protection question as privacy and medical intake.
The case arrives as medical expenses remain a pressure point for many households. A PYMNTS Intelligence report cited concern about health insurance costs rising from 60% to 63% between October and January, while concern among baby boomers and seniors about medical bills and copays rose from 53% to 55%. The report also found that 46% of Generation Z cited prescription costs as a challenge in January, up 12 percentage points from October.
The lawsuit does not resolve those allegations. It does, however, show regulators testing whether digital health companies can use consumer-software acquisition, data and retention methods in a market where medical privacy, consent and recurring payment rules carry higher stakes.
This story draws on original reporting from PYMNTS.
