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Woman’s Talkspace therapy app sessions exposed in court (www.proofnews.org)

submitted 4 days ago by XLE@piefed.social to c/privacy@programming.dev

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She confessed her worries to her therapist: her marriage, her finances, and self-esteem. Therapists are legally and ethically bound to confidentiality, but two years later, a transcript of every word typed to her psychologist using the app Talkspace was produced in court by her former employer.

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[+] HasturInYellow@lemmy.world -7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This is like a a child being mauled by a rabid dog in the park full of rabid dogs. They were warned about the dogs and have lived their whole life watching others go into the park and being mauled by them. But the park says "no rabid dogs" and having rabid dogs is illegal, so it'll probably be fine.

Who the fuck thought giving sensitive data to a company would result in anything other than that data being sold for profit as the earliest convenience? Genuinely, you would have to be fucking stupid to think that.

Yes that means most people in the world are making great cases for their own stupidity.

[–] lifeinlarkhall@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago

Idk, I'm not in the US but if a therapist was found to break confidentiality or to have possession of information unethically then there'd be a media and political storm on it. Particularly since covid, more therapy and healthcare is conducted online. For some people it may even be the only accessible option.

You are not stupid where I live to expect health organizations to abide by the laws around confidentiality 😅 You would expect health organizations to have the highest secured systems and if they were exposed it would be in a cyber attack from an outside party and the information available for that kind of attack would be limited, de-identified, - it would be an absolute top level scandal, mass class action suit, criminal charges if whole identifiable transcripts of sessions like this were being stored and released in a way that breached the law.

People seeking out therapy are already vulnerable, not stupid. They may be desperate and unfortunately, there are some shitty apps and stuff that DON'T fall under regulations. It's important to make sure you're talking to a real person and the organization is a registered provider ( however that works in various countries) but a person is not stupid for being intentionally preyed on in their vulnerablity and desperation by greedy, unethical people.