Abbott Laboratories
Health Care
38
out of 100. Number 313 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where Abbott Laboratories does well
- Arbitration 3 of 20. Few problems found.
- Renewals 0 of 20. Nothing found.
- NO forced arbitration and NO class-action waiver anywhere in the main website terms or the LibreLinkUp EULA — strikingly rare for a company of Abbott's size; disputes go to Illinois courts, not private arbitration.
- No auto-renew traps or subscription billing exists in Abbott's consumer surface at all — no subscription products found.
- Abbott Diabetes Care's HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices explicitly states 'In these cases we never share your information unless you give us written permission: Marketing purposes; Sale of your information; Most sharing of psychotherapy notes.'
- The June 2025 US privacy policy contains a dedicated 'Your Privacy Rights and Choices' section with rights to know, delete, correct, and opt out of sale/share, plus a clearly published privacy contact (privacy@abbott.com).
Using the diabetes companion app means handing Abbott a worldwide, royalty-free license to your personal information and consenting to Abbott keeping, using, and sharing de-identified versions of your glucose data with outside researchers — all buried in a clickwrap app agreement for a medical tool.
The fine print
6 clauses and findings from the draft archive, dated 1 October 2026. The plain English comes first; the small print is the company's own words. None of these has been checked yet.
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Using the diabetes companion app means handing Abbott a worldwide, royalty-free license to your personal information and consenting to Abbott keeping, using, and sharing de-identified versions of your glucose data with outside researchers — all buried in a clickwrap app agreement for a medical tool.
We do not claim ownership of the data you transmit or submit to LibreView or any LibreView information displayed to you via the LibreLinkUp App. By disclosing your personal information to us you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish and translate such data for the purpose of providing you with LibreView. We may create, access, retain and use, or disclose to third party researchers, aggregated, anonymized, de-identified (or pseudonymized to the extent permitted by your law) data derived from LibreView for the purposes of research, to evaluate how LibreView is provided, ... or for product development.
LibreLinkUp App End User License Agreement (effective September 2025)
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Abbott says it doesn't 'sell' data for money, then admits in the same breath that its analytics-and-advertising sharing legally counts as a 'sale' or 'share' under state privacy laws — your identifiers, browsing activity, and location data go to advertisers and analytics vendors.
Abbott does not sell your Personal Information for money, but some of the ways in which we may share your Personal Information with certain third parties that provide services to us, such as analytics and targeted advertising services, may be considered a 'sale' under California, Colorado, and Connecticut law, and may be considered a 'share' under California law, as those terms are defined under those laws. ... Abbott may 'sell' or 'share' with third parties for cross-context behavioral advertising or targeted advertising the following categories of Personal Information: Identifiers; Internet or other electronic network activity information; Geolocation data.
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Abbott can rewrite its website terms at any time without telling you; simply continuing to visit the site counts as agreeing to the new rules.
Your access to Abbott.com is subject to the following Terms and Conditions, which may be updated by us from time to time without notice to you. ... You are responsible for periodically reviewing these Terms and Conditions for applicable changes. Your use of this Web site after posting by us of any changes to these Terms and Conditions constitutes your acceptance to those changes.
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Anything you submit to Abbott's websites — feedback, questions, ideas, stories — can be copied, published, modified, and turned into derivative works 'in any manner Abbott chooses.'
You grant to Abbott the right to use all content you upload or otherwise transmit to this Web site, subject to these Terms and Conditions and Abbott's Privacy Policy in any manner Abbott chooses, including, but not limited, to copying, displaying, performing or publishing it in any format whatsoever, modifying it, incorporating it into other material or making a derivative work based on it.
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If your health-related data is intercepted or breached on Abbott's site despite its safeguards, Abbott disclaims all responsibility and all damages — even though it handles diabetes and other health data.
You recognize and agree that when submitting your personally identifiable information to Abbott.com, while Abbott has safeguards in place to prevent unauthorized access or interception, there is no absolute guarantee of security. IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT OF AN INTERCEPTION OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DESPITE OUR EFFORTS, ABBOTT SHALL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR SUCH INTERCEPTIONS OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS, OR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ... SUFFERED BY A CUSTOMER OR USER, EVEN IF ABBOTT HAS PREVIOUSLY BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
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You give up the normal multi-year window to sue; Abbott caps your time to file any claim at just one year.
You agree that regardless of any applicable law to the contrary, you cannot file a claim or cause of action arising out of or related to Abbott.com or these Terms and Conditions more than one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arose.
How these were found
Documents relied on (all read via browser_open or verbatim search snippets from official domains, accessed Oct 1, 2026): (1) Abbott US Online Terms & Conditions, https://www.abbott.com/en-us/online-terms-and-conditions.html (full text read; no version date stated). (2) Abbott US Privacy Policy, https://www.abbott.com/en-us/privacy-policy (last updated/effective June 30, 2025) — browser_open only returned the introductory section due to dynamic page loading; the CCPA 'sale/share' language was taken verbatim from the published June 8, 2023 corporate privacy policy PDF (https://www.abbott.com/content/dam/corp/abbott/en-us/policies/cybersecurity/Abbott-Corp-Privacy-Policy-6-8-23.pdf) via search-result snippets; the 2025 policy's privacy-rights/opt-out section could not be fully verified. (3) LibreLinkUp App End User License Agreement, effective September 2025, https://files.libreview.io/files/documents/en-US/LLU_EULA_2025-05-27.html (full 754-line text read). (4) LibreView HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices, https://www.libreview.com/files/documents/en-US/HIPAADoc_2024-04-01.pdf, via search snippets. Limitations: Abbott is overwhelmingly B2B (hospital, lab, nutrition-products channels); the consumer-facing legal surface is its websites and the FreeStyle Libre/LibreView app terms — there are no consumer subscriptions, so auto-renew traps are effectively unscoreable (scored 0, noted honestly). The Consumer Health Data policy page referenced in Abbott's Data Privacy Framework statement (www.abbott.com/privacypolicy/consumerhealthdata.html) returned HTTP 404 — Abbott appears to have moved or consolidated it. Scores reflect the limited consumer surface; a largely-B2B health company simply has fewer consumer trap opportunities than e.g. a social platform.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.