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posted by martyb on Thursday September 03 2015, @12:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the must-not-have-used-gmail dept.

The BBC News reports that:

The 56 Dean Street clinic in London's Soho sent out the names and email addresses of 780 patients when a newsletter was issued to people who attend the clinic. Patients were supposed to be blind-copied into the email but instead details were sent as a group email.

From an interview with one patient:

One man, a 40-year-old public sector worker, has been HIV positive for 13 years and has been using the Dean Street clinic for five. He said: "I felt sick when I realised what had happened. I first saw the email at work but ignored it as I was busy. I then looked at it when I was on the way home from work. I couldn't breathe. I'm concerned who will get this information. If it ends up in the hands of the wrong people, such as hate groups, it could be dynamite."

Further:

Fellow patient James ... said: "I was travelling back from the pride parade in Manchester on Monday when I received this email. I couldn't believe it when I got it and I've been full of worry since. I am not ready to disclose my HIV status to my wider friends or family. I fear now that I have no choice."

Finally, a friend informs me that a breach of privacy at another clinic may be widely reported within the next few days.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:09PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:09PM (#231710) Journal

    Inability to use BCC

    You call this "inability"?! Why... was BCC missing/defective so that the sender was unable to use it in spite of her/his best intention to do it?
    I'd rather call it stupidity... nay, scratch that... disability of the sender, more precisely some sort of intellectual disability. And it's too bad this disability was not detected before.

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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Anne Nonymous on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:31PM

    by Anne Nonymous (712) on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:31PM (#231718)

    Well if he's got a disability, we better start sending him $800 a month.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:37PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:37PM (#231767) Journal

      I thought it was 800 Euros each month. No one wants dollars anymore.

      • (Score: 2) by Anne Nonymous on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:57PM

        by Anne Nonymous (712) on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:57PM (#231782)

        Sorry, I have $/€ syndrome.

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by nukkel on Thursday September 03 2015, @07:39PM

          by nukkel (168) on Thursday September 03 2015, @07:39PM (#231921)

          Here, have 800 rubles.

          • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Saturday September 05 2015, @01:01AM

            by meisterister (949) on Saturday September 05 2015, @01:01AM (#232475) Journal

            Cool! Now I can get either a pizza or two or a terrifyingly large number of nehalem CPUs!

            --
            (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @08:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @08:10PM (#231935)

    Ignoring your dictionary pedantry - calling the sender stupid is itself stupid. Sending a CC that should have been a BCC happens all the damn time. This person made an error that practically everybody on the net has made at least once in their lives.

    The problem is not with the sender, the problem is that the tools are not fit for purpose. The clinic's email system should never have let a giant CC list go out without explicit human confirmation. In fact it is such a common problem that all email systems should give the user warning and a way to easily switch a message to BCC mode under such conditions.