The state of medical privacy has become quite appalling lately. I started using a young doctor in a new office and they are gung ho on modern tech. That’s fine to some extent but they want to send me invoices and all correspondence via e-mail. No PGP of course. I did an MX lookup on their vanity email address & it resolves to an MS Outlook server.
I asked them for my test results. They offered to email them.
My response: I do not want sensitive medical info coming by e-mail via Microsoft’s servers. I did not give you a copy of my email address for that reason. It needs to be snail-mailed to me.
Perhaps of greater concern is that the receptionist acted like I am making a unusual request, and that they do not mail things. Apparently I am the only patient who has a problem with sensitive medical info going to Microsoft. So the receptionist is investigating whether she can get approval to mail me my results by post.
I wonder if someone in that clinic will have to run out and buy stamps because I have a problem with Microsoft.
Indeed. We need more activism. More patients refusing to disclose their email addresses and insisting on paper correspondence. This pressures clinics and hospitals looking to save money to ask why email is rejected, and from there have some incentive to fix it. That incentive won’t exist if everyone is a pushover. IMO we ideally need ~15% or so people to practice this way of activism. But note as well just one activist can make a dent.. an office having to do things differently from their normal workflow for just one person does not go unnoticed.
BTW, refusal to disclose an email address to gmail and outlook users is my general mode of operation -- not just with medicine. Public services and utility companies are also forced to reach me via snail mail (because either their website blocks Tor, or their email is MS/Google).
definitely agree with you.
also PGP is so easy to use that honestly I really cannot grasp why it's not more used for critical communication like this. if the emails were encrypted this would be much less of a problem