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.
“as the company’s CEO recently told investors, has amassed “one of the largest mental health data banks in the world,””
If he is saying this, he is basically pointing out that he is ready to sell this data to the highest bidder under some guise of “we ensure that we respect our clients’ privacies and identities will be kept anonymous but the fine print allows us to do this blah blah” bullshit. If that ever happens he and the owner of the company should be jailed no matter what contracts they had people sign.
Good thing that my therapy are in forums and social media–which are free by the way-- where you can be anonymous!
– where you can be anonymous!
For now, at least. Legislation, and the legislators behind them, don’t seem to move in the right direction in regards of online ‘anonymity’.
As for the OP: I completely quit consulting any therapist the day I noticed them using connected apps/online services which happened to also be around the same time I first started hearing people wanting to get rid of confidentiality in the name of, your get it, protecting the children.
My therapist is now my personal journal. Well, technically, it has been my therapist for the last 4 or 5 decades but it is now the only therapist I feel like I can trust.
Sad times we’re living in.
Tell me more about your therapy in forums and social media.
Why would anyone assume that something you are sharing on an app or online service would ever be private?
It even says right there when you agree to the services that they can disclose anything when required by law.
If you market yourself as providing Health care, people will naturally expect patient confidentiality laws. If you act otherwise you are being fraudulent
The question remains, who in the fuck is believe a single word of any corporation in this day and age? Regardless of the legality of the matter.
Why do people like you attack the victim? The company is the monster for burying this stuff in pages-long ToSs in the intentional effort to make these sorts of disclaimers hard to find and understand. Is it because the individual is an easier target to pick on because there’s a name and face to this poor woman versus a faceless, evil corporation in the shadows of bits and bytes with no clear antagonist?
Yes, she obviously messed up but the greater blame is always on the data predator, no exceptions—because if they acted ethically (even if it was legal, it was unethical), then this shock wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
There is no reason that physically prevents them from putting it in giant, bold-faced font at the top: YOUR DATA WILL BE COLLECTED AND MAY BE USED AGAINST YOU. I’ve seen some ToSs with formatting in them, so it’s totally possible. They should all be required to do this by law. Same with Niantic collecting all the camera pics from Pokémon Go players to eventually train their own AI, and not even returning any cut of the profits. Was it with the millions of players’ “consent?” Sure, in legalese, but come on… Your wording suggests that the company is completely in the right, which, pardon my language, comes off as abhorrent when these people are just trying to find help, stress relief, etc. and don’t have time to read through dozens of pages when the companies deceptively paint everything else as attractively as possible.
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.
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.
Don’t forget the dystopian American legals system that allows all of that in the first place.
When the system’s built to be used most successfully by those who have the most money for it….
Flagstaff said it quite well, but the entire US healthcare market is being replaced by a for-profit Wellness industry with no protections
The healthcare Market has gotten to corrupted by insurance to function correctly, Wellness is taking over as a replacement like an opportunistic infection. Unfortunately there are no standards so this isn’t really a viable option and they’re basically scamming desperate people with snake oil, but that’s what happens when your Healthcare System decays into dysfunction
Lol, “replaced by”?
Pretty much what we always had
