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posted by mrpg on Wednesday July 18 2018, @02:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the Ambulance-chasers-anonymous dept.

Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt has ordered an urgent review of Australia's biggest online doctor booking searching HealthEngine which has given hundreds of user's medical information to lawyers. This is how ambulance chasing works in the 21st century. No need to chase actual ambulances, just scan the medical records of people looking for clients. HealthEngine is partially owned by Telstra, which may explain this behaviour.

Prominent law firm Slater and Gordon confirmed that HealthEngine passed a list of potential clients to them on a daily basis averaging 200 per month which netted them at least $500,000 in legal fees. The app collects data such as whether or not the medical problem was a workplace injury making it easy to target potential clients for the lawyers to chase. The privacy policy for the app makes no mention of sharing the information with third parties for marketing purposes. While there is a collection notice, this information is not readily obvious to users many of whom are unaware that their private data is being sent on to other companies.

[...] HealthEngine and Slater and Gordon both declined interview requests and did not respond directly to questions.

HealthEngine said in a statement the company used advertising to "deliver relevant and timely information from our many different advertising partners to our users."


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  • (Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Wednesday July 18 2018, @02:48PM (2 children)

    by BsAtHome (889) on Wednesday July 18 2018, @02:48PM (#708787)

    ...information is not readily obvious to users many of whom are unaware that their private data is being sent on to other companies.

    Well, this is how the predator finds the pray. Or, in other words, the pray has not yet adapted to the predator's change. Let the next arms race begin? If we cannot see it this way, then we must recognize that people are stupid and not fit for the internet. In any case, evolutionary rules say that they must adapt or die out.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 18 2018, @04:22PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 18 2018, @04:22PM (#708857) Journal

      In any case, evolutionary rules say that they must adapt or die out.

      They should not die out. That would limit future opportunities for other predators / scammers.

      Instead, the prey should pray that they don't become prey while the predators pray that they can catch the prey.

      the pray has not yet adapted to the predator's change.

      Why should victims have to adapt to scammers? Don't we already pass laws protecting people from criminals? We just need to keep adapting law enforcement to keep up with the new tactics of the criminals.

      (but that is government regulation! someone will cry personal responsibility! Or understanding your contract in advance of your interaction with the criminal.)

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 1) by Vokbain on Wednesday July 18 2018, @06:31PM

      by Vokbain (2372) on Wednesday July 18 2018, @06:31PM (#708927)

      I pray that the predator doesn't get me.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 18 2018, @02:50PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 18 2018, @02:50PM (#708789)

    Australia seems to have a lot of issue with online services. Just take a peek at their latest health record fiasco [zdnet.com].

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 18 2018, @04:27PM (2 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 18 2018, @04:27PM (#708861) Journal

      I would say throw more hardware at it. But then, they probably didn't have the foresight, or even understand how to construct a scalable system.

      The US government has also been guilty of now knowing how to build a website. I seem to recall something called Healthcare.gov? The obvious solution is to hire a big well known name in technology. Someone on the trailing edge. And throw a lot of money at them. That will work.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday July 18 2018, @10:47PM (1 child)

        by sjames (2882) on Wednesday July 18 2018, @10:47PM (#709063) Journal

        Considering that the system crashed under the load of people opting out, perhaps they chould just make it opt-in. They shouldn't have much load problem supporting all 3 people who actively want it.

        • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:25PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:25PM (#709408)

          It was opt in. To justify the 2 billion spent on it they are now going opt out.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @02:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @02:35PM (#709931)

      That's just sad

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 18 2018, @05:59PM (3 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 18 2018, @05:59PM (#708907)

    How about an optimist/pessimist version of the glass being half full, such that ridiculous over the top legal and privacy violation on an entire continent (OK, a ridiculously small island, but still technically a continent) still only net half a million bucks.

    That would imply either this is very street level and the real players who are protected are turning over billions, or the law is being so effectively enforced that small beans is all that occasionally happens?

    I was just kinda struck that at the white collar level people would risk so much for a mere half mil. Remember with the housing bubble in AUS, that's like a quarter of a "starter home". You'd think there would be easier criminal ways to earn a half mil.

    Could be an example of inadvertent control fraud where no one person knows everything thats going on such that the whole system is a crime, but every individual step appeared legal and normal. Or, often enough when talking about fraud type stuff, you end up with CEOs taking the blame, at least for PR purposes, for one engineer or one salesdroid ten layers below them in the hierarchy.

    Interesting thing to think about, there's no individual downside to what actually happened, merely a lot of "slippery slope" arguments about how bad something that could happen but didn't, could theoretically possibly be in a fictionalized sense. Usually courts don't like victimless crimes, although this is AUS and I don't know their legal system as well as ours. In Germany it seems "someone should do something about that before it becomes a problem" is the law of the land with speculative lawsuits but in the USA they generally don't roll with "theoretically in a tangentially related manner some unidentified future person might be harmed" or if you can do it its wrapped up in a lot of statistics like EPA/OSHA stuff.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 18 2018, @09:31PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 18 2018, @09:31PM (#709011)

      ridiculously small island

      ??? Australia is roughly the same size as the contiguous USA.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @04:20AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @04:20AM (#709797)

        He means Flinders Island?
        Or perhaps Tassie

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @07:02AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @07:02AM (#709827)

          ps. Do NOT google 'Map of Tasmania' while at work.

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