The Federal Trade Commission, joined by California and Utah, sued San Francisco telehealth company Hims & Hers this week, alleging it handed patients' sensitive medical information to Meta, Snap and other advertising platforms while quietly locking customers into prescription subscriptions they never knowingly approved.

Regulators are seeking a permanent injunction, consumer refunds and civil penalties. The complaint was filed July 29 in federal court in San Francisco, where Hims & Hers is based.

The complaint, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, takes aim at one of the country's largest direct-to-consumer telehealth firms — a homegrown SF company that markets treatments for weight loss, sexual health, mental health and hair loss. California joined the case through Los Angeles County Counsel, alongside Utah; together the plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction, monetary relief and civil penalties, according to the FTC. Regulators say Hims promised to guard the privacy of that intimate health data, then shared it anyway. For a city that has become both a hub of the telehealth boom and a battleground over how tech companies handle personal data, the case tests whether "your privacy matters" marketing can survive contact with a federal complaint.

"The FTC's complaint lays out a troubling scenario — consumers unknowingly locked into recurring subscriptions and the disclosure to third parties of consumers' most private health information without their consent," Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. "The FTC will not hesitate to act on behalf of consumers deprived of their ability to choose which products they want and whether to keep their most sensitive health information private."

According to the FTC's complaint, the data reached advertisers by two routes. Hims shared lists of certain customers directly with the platforms, and it deployed third-party tracking technologies that automatically transmitted "Events" — the actions visitors took on the Hims website — to those companies. The agency says this happened despite the company's public promises to keep patient information private.

The billing allegations are just as pointed. Hims tells consumers they can "connect" with a medical provider to decide whether they need a prescription, and that they won't be charged until medication is prescribed, according to regulators. One consumer complaint cited in the case reads: "I was told that I would be able to speak with a doctor in a few days and that nothing would be charged to my card that day. Him's & Her's [sic] charged me immediately!"

Canceling was, by the FTC's account, deliberately hard. Before 2023 the company required most customers to cancel by phone, email or chat; even after adding online cancellation, the FTC alleges Hims hid the cancel button behind an "add/remove items from order" menu and several additional steps.

The Commission voted 2-0 to authorize the complaint. Utah brought claims under its Consumer Sales Practices Act, and California under its False Advertising and Unfair Competition laws. The FTC named Siobhan Amin, Barbara Chun and Jordan Navarrette of its Western Region Los Angeles office as lead staff on the matter.

Hims & Hers rejected the allegations. "We are confident in our position and will vigorously defend ourselves against these baseless claims," the company said in a statement reported by SFGATE, adding that it had "continued to strengthen our processes and systems."

The suit lands as Hims, founded in 2017, is already under a national spotlight for its sale of compounded GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. Earlier this year the company settled a lawsuit from drugmaker Novo Nordisk by agreeing to sell Novo-branded medications and stop offering the compounded versions, SFGATE reported.

The case, styled around consumer-protection law rather than health-privacy statutes like HIPAA, will be decided by the court. An FTC complaint reflects only a "reason to believe" that the law was violated; the burden now shifts to litigation in a San Francisco courtroom.