Facebook in privacy fail as psychiatrist's patients are recommended to become friends with each othe
Source: Daily Mail
- The psychiatrist first became aware of this problem when Facebook had begun recommending her own patients to her as potential friends
- She thinks Facebook's friend-finding algorithm was able to link up her patients because they all have her number in their phones
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According to Fusion writer Kashmir Hill, she has been contacted recently by a psychiatrist named Lisa who discovered that Facebook had started recommending her own patients as potential friends.
The mental health professional, who lives in a small town, was surprised and troubled by this development, since she was an infrequent Facebook user and had not granted the app access to her phone contacts.
However, upon reviewing her Facebook profile, Lisa realized that she had shared her phone own number on the social media site.
The matter took a more disturbing turn when one of her patients, a snowboarder in his 30s, came to her saying that he had begun getting recommendations to 'friend' septuagenarians with whom he had nothing in common, and whom he never met.
The young man quickly came to the realization that the elderly strangers the app was suggesting to him as potential friends must have been some of Lisas other patients.
Sometime later, another patient of Lisas got a friend suggestion on Facebook for a person she recognized from a chance encounter in the offices elevator.
<snip>
Its a massive privacy fail, said Lisa, who asked Fusion not to use her real name.
I have patients with HIV, people that have attempted suicide and women in coercive and violent relationships.
As a precaution, the psychiatrist and her colleagues in the medical community now urge their patients not go on Facebook while at the office, or even leave their phones at home when going for an appointment.
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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3765881/Facebook-privacy-fail-psychiatrist-s-patients-recommended-friends-other.html?ITO=1490
blue neen
(12,306 posts)It's hard to even know where to begin.
This is beyond a privacy fail. It is setting up healthcare professionals for HIPAA violations.
arithia
(455 posts)The two running theories of how this happened are through
1) collected location data that showed the people were "congregating" at the office
2) the psychiatrist's phone number was on the phones of her patients who then shared that list with facebook
Since there is no negligence, theft or proof of malfeasance on the part of the doctor's office, it would be difficult to nail them for HIPAA. I'd say ban cell phones from Dr's offices altogether, but that wouldn't prevent the location data from reading your phone in the parking lot.
Perhaps Facebook should consider starting a Medical Provider phone number database? List your practice on there with it's phone numbers and it's removed from the program that's causing the issue. Or maybe just allow users to manually edit what numbers from your phone contact list can be used for friend-finding.
JudyM
(29,122 posts)the Act, it doesn't seem that a 3rd party's accessing and distributing/using it would be actionable against her. Going forward, though, the publicity about this could change the standard... pretty interesting to think about... doesn't seem that any of this would be actionable against FB, either... certainly not under HIPAA because FB isn't regulated by it.
Would be interesting to explore whether anyone could sue FB for invasion of privacy...
blue neen
(12,306 posts)A Round Tuit
(88 posts)Farcebook is a fail...period.
strategery blunder
(4,225 posts)Those who dismiss my objections to their ToS reply "Oh, you can change your privacy settings!" It doesn't matter, they will still find a way to violate
No way in hell I'll use a "service" that uses information obtained from third-party sources (which facebook does) to expose my contact information to potential weirdos and worse. Yes, google does it too, but they're (at least) primarily interested in selling that information to traditional advertisers, not random crackpots, and the resulting ads are much easier to ignore than stalkers and such.
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)I especially liked the way you kept adding qualifier after qualifier to rationalize parties other than FB doing it.
"It doesn't matter, they will still find a way to violate."
Creative allegation. Entertaining, as well. Yet wholly unsourced... like a bumper sticker.
strategery blunder
(4,225 posts)They quite literally attempted to create a social network of psychiatric patients.
Sadly, while I can't say I predicted this conduct, it was a reasonably foreseeable possibility. My primary motivation for avoiding Facebook has long been avoiding the types who would use it as an avenue to stalk me.
The only thing that will induce Facebook to stop crap like this is a few hundred million in lawsuit payouts to victims of Facebook-abetted crime (most likely of the stalking variety).
leftyladyfrommo
(18,815 posts)I couldn't figure out why they kept telling me I needed to be in contact with people that I already knew. Then I realized they were hooked into my contact list.
I don't do linkedin any more.
JudyM
(29,122 posts)Skittles
(152,963 posts)skypilot
(8,847 posts)...the first day I signed up on it. It immediately suggested a "possible friend" (or whatever they call it) and it was actually someone I know. I sent her a friend request and she was a bit shocked too. She sent me a message back asking if I had "searched" her. I told her that I had not. It was only later someone informed me that they go through your email contacts and connect you with people that way. This woman was someone I'd emailed a number of YEARS prior. I was always a bit wary of it after that. I almost never used it and would get kind of annoyed when people would send me friend requests and then not respond AT ALL when I accepted. Not even a quick "Hey, how've you been?" I know that lots of people find it useful. I don't. I thought it was rather pointless. And then I'd get "notifications" about every...fucking...thing and every...fucking...one. It was when I tried to figure out how to change my settings to stop this from happening that I realized I didn't care enough to figure it out and I just deactivated my account altogether. Apparently, you can't really DELETE it. Anyway...good riddance to that shit.
Oneironaut
(5,461 posts)Facebook suggests my boss (of whom I have no mutual friends) among people for friends. It was kind of sobering seeing that at first (and I'm of the mind that everything on Facebook might as well be yelled into a microphone, including your friends, pictures, interests, and 'private' groups).
Facebook is not private, though their algorithm might be violating laws somehow here. Why would such an intrusive level of data mining for friend suggestions ever be needed?