Patient’s STD Test Results Posted To Facebook After Privacy Breach

Having your information hacked is a traumatic experience for everyone, but it becomes even worse when the hacker begins publicly humiliating the victim. That’s what happened recently to a woman in Contra Costa County, California, after a hospital employee gained access to her medical records and began publicly posting evidence of STDs and other “embarrassing” details on Facebook.

While this privacy violation isn’t Facebook’s fault, the victim’s attorney says it took the social media giant over a month to remove the account after it was brought to their attention. According to the attorney, this only exacerbated the trauma inflicted on the victim.

“Protected Heath Information (PHI) privacy breaches or violations in and of themselves carry with them, or inflict, an enormous amount of harm, especially emotional trauma, simply based upon the inherently personal and often compromising nature of the private information revealed,” attorney Torin Dorros said. “Many of my clients over the years have indicated that their specific PHI privacy violation was one of the most traumatizing experiences in their lives.  That is why I feel so strongly about this area.”

While Facebook prides itself on being able to automatically detect many kinds of offensive content, it needs to do a much better job of responding quickly to its users when a problem like this is brought to its attention.




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