If you’ve ever ordered hair loss pills, erectile dysfunction medication or a weight loss shot from Hims & Hers (NYSE: HIMS), federal regulators have something to tell you about what happened next.
You may have been billed before any doctor looked at your file. You may have gone hunting for a hidden button to make the charges stop. And the details of what you were treated for may have landed at Meta and Snap.
Those are allegations, not proven facts. But they come from the Federal Trade Commission, which sued the telehealth giant on Wednesday alongside Utah and Los Angeles County.
I’ve been writing about money for more than 35 years, and I’ve read a lot of FTC complaints. This one is uglier than most — not because the numbers are huge, but because of what the company allegedly did with information people had every reason to think was private.
Bloomberg has reported the company has more than 2.4 million subscribers. Here’s what the government says happened to them.
1. You got charged before anyone reviewed your case
Hims tells people they’ll get to consult with a medical provider and land on a treatment that’s right for them, according to the complaint. So you fill out the intake form. You hand over your billing information.
The FTC alleges the charge hits almost immediately — before that promised review ever takes place.
2. The consultation you were promised often never happened
This is the part that stopped me cold.
The FTC alleges most customers never get a consultation with a provider at all. Instead, the agency says, submitting that intake form is what enrolls you — charged for and subscribed to a treatment you never got to look over or approve.
The government’s claim isn’t that the consultation was rushed. It’s that for most people, it didn’t happen.
3. Nobody told you clearly when the next charge would land
A subscription you can’t predict is a subscription you can’t escape.
The complaint alleges Hims failed to clearly and conspicuously tell customers when their prescriptions would refill each month. Miss that window and you’ve bought another month’s supply whether you wanted it or not.
4. For years, quitting meant running a gauntlet
Before 2023, the FTC says, most customers could only cancel by getting hold of customer service — phone, email or chat — and the company piled on extra hurdles once they did.
Anybody who’s tried to cancel a gym membership knows this playbook. The company isn’t trying to help you leave. It’s trying to make leaving expensive in the only currency that matters: your time.
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5. Then the cancel button got buried
Hims added online cancellation for most customers in 2023. Sounds like progress.
The FTC alleges the button was hidden. To find it, the agency says, you had to pick an option to add or remove items from your order, then click through several more steps before the word “cancel” even appeared on screen.
That’s not an accident of web design. That’s a maze, and the FTC says it was built on purpose.
6. Your health details allegedly went to Meta and Snap in bulk
Here’s where it stops being about money.
The complaint alleges Hims handed customer lists to third-party advertising platforms including Meta and Snap — while promising customers it protected their privacy.
Think about what that means for a company whose business is ED, hair loss, mental health and weight loss. That’s not your email address. That’s your diagnosis.
7. Invisible trackers allegedly reported what you did on the site
The lists weren’t the only pipeline, according to the FTC.
The agency alleges Hims also used third-party tracking technology that automatically fired off “Events” — what visitors actually did on the website — to those same advertising companies.
You didn’t click anything to agree to that. You couldn’t see it happen. And if the FTC is right, it was running the whole time you were filling out a form about your body.
Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, described the complaint as laying out a troubling scenario, with “consumers unknowingly locked into recurring subscriptions” and their most private health details handed to outsiders without consent.
What Hims & Hers says about all this
As of this writing, not much yet. Bloomberg reported that spokespeople for the company didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment after the suit was filed.
That’s worth sitting with. These are allegations in a complaint, filed in federal court in Northern California on a 2-0 Commission vote. The FTC files when it has reason to believe a company is breaking the law. A judge decides who’s right.
Investors didn’t wait for the verdict. Bloomberg reported shares fell as much as 16% after the news broke.
The rule that would’ve stopped this got killed last year
Now for the part almost nobody will tell you.
There was supposed to be a federal rule making exactly this illegal. The FTC’s click-to-cancel rule would have required companies to make quitting as easy as joining.
It was days from taking full effect in July 2025 when the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw it out entirely. Not on the merits — because the agency skipped a required economic analysis.
So it’s gone. The FTC restarted the process in March, asking the public whether a new rule is even needed.
Which leaves regulators suing one company at a time under a 2010 law, the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act. That’s a slow way to fix a fast problem.
What to do right now
Don’t wait on Washington. Here are four moves to make today:
- Audit your recurring charges. Pull three months of card and bank statements and read every line. Not the summary — every line. Most people find at least one subscription they forgot about. Our roundup of subscriptions worth canceling is a decent starting checklist.
- Cancel through the card, not just the company. If a merchant makes cancellation a maze, call your card issuer and ask them to block future charges from that merchant. You have that power. Use it.
- Screenshot everything before you sign up. Every promise on the page about consultations, charges and cancellation. If it turns into a dispute, that screenshot is your evidence.
- Assume the health form is a marketing form. Until the law says otherwise, treat any intake questionnaire on a commercial website as advertising data. We’ve written before about the money apps tracking your every move, and the fixes there apply here too.
Telehealth is genuinely useful. Millions of people get real care they’d otherwise skip out of cost or embarrassment. I’m not telling you to avoid it.
I’m telling you that convenience and privacy aren’t the same thing, and the company selling you the first one has every incentive to let you assume you’re getting the second.
Read the terms. Watch the statement. And never assume a form that feels like a doctor’s office is treated like one.
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