This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 3:30 pm and is filed under FYI. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Natasha Singer in The New York Times lists all the entities that can look at them. This list is very long:
Then there is this:
While Netflix and some health care concerns say they have been able to offer study data to researchers stripped of specific personal details like your name, phone number and e-mail address, in some cases researchers may be able to re-identify you by correlating anonymous information with the digital trail that you’ve left on blogs, chat rooms and Twitter.
In 1997, for example, a researcher identified the medical records of William Weld, then the governor of Massachusetts, by correlating birthdays, ZIP codes and gender in voter registration rolls and information published by the state’s government insurance commission.
“Once personal health data gets out there, it’s like the Paris Hilton sex tape,” Dr. Peel said. “It is going to be out there forever.”
October 20th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
This is amazing. Thanks for posting this.
October 21st, 2009 at 7:59 am
This is an incredible chart. It’s actually kind of scary.
October 21st, 2009 at 8:30 am
It’s more than scary. It’s alarming. Terrifying. And totally unacceptable.
October 21st, 2009 at 9:53 am
Ken, it’s also awful! And many other things too off color to print here.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:57 am
I keep hearing how restrictive HIPAA is. Apparently it is not restrictive enough.