Should the Popular RealAge Quiz Be Renamed 'RealAds?'

It's hard to miss the RealAge test, the quiz that purports to tell you whether your lifestyle gives you the health of someone younger -- or older -- than your chronological age. Advertisements on many sites, including LifeTwo, have driven over 27 million people to learn their 'biological age.'

But the New York Times reports that answers to the RealAge test are sold to drug companies, who sort through the responses to find people they then target with direct email. If someone has answered a few of the 150 questions with a profile that indicates they might be susceptible to heart disease, they might receive messages about the condition paid for by companies that sell medication to treat it.

RealAge test takers become fair game when they sign up for their free RealAge membership. The privacy policy sounds innocuous ...

If you elect to say yes to becoming a free RealAge Member (as described below), we will periodically send you free newsletters and e-mails that directly promote the use of our site(s) or the purchase of our products or services and may contain, in whole or in part, advertisements for third parties which relate to marketed products of selected RealAge partners.

... but RealAge's VP of Marketing told the NYT's Stephanie Clifford what that means:

"... if you want to reach males over 60 that are high blood pressure sufferers in northwest Buffalo with under $50,000 household income that also have a high risk of diabetes, you could."

Clifford also describes Hologic, a company selling a drug aimed a premenopausal women with heavy periods:

(Holologic) buys lists of women who have answered a test question by saying they have heavy menstrual bleeding, among other criteria. He chooses the ones in the 37- to 49-year-old age range, then sends them a series of e-mail messages. Several of the messages do not mention NovaSure, they just identify heavy bleeding as a problem — then, he said, the messages suggest NovaSure as a solution.

It's likely that virtually all the test takers have no idea that their detailed health information is being made available to marketers, and that they're receiving highly targeted information as a result.

One bright spot is that RealAge handles the email distribution itself and doesn't provide the drug companies with consumers' email addresses.