What can possibly go wrong….
David Knowles reports:
Qpid.me, a California-based company, is hoping to make the sharing of STD test results as commonplace as Facebook status updates or Twitter messages, and has partnered with the Los Angeles Unified School District to get their message across.
The company’s newly launched, free service helps direct anyone in the United States over the age of 13 to the nearest testing facility, then allows a person to receive results on their cellphone or computer and share that information via text message or Internet link with anyone they choose.
[…]
Qpid.me receives its data directly from health providers that have been pre-screened by the company, and helps deliver it to a user in a much more timely fashion.
Following HIPAA privacy guidelines, the company assures users that all test results are kept secret.
Read more on the New York Daily News. Note that although the headline on the Daily News actually read, “Social site Qpid.me partners with LA schools to help teens get STD tests and share results,” Qpid.me corrected their site this afternoon to include the following statement:
LAUSD Correction: LAUSD is concerned about the health and safety of all students. We strive to provide information to keep our students both healthy and safe. LAUSD is not however a partner with qpid. After learning about and studying qpid’s technology, the program manager for HIV/AIDS prevention shared it with seventh and ninth-grade health teachers only. The teachers were instructed that they could choose to use it, when or if it was appropriate. Since the resource is not part of the curriculum, teacher usage was not tracked.
I cannot find a clear privacy policy on Qpid.me that says under what conditions they will share user information. Nor can I find any section of their site that describes their data security.
As you can imagine, I’ve sent them a number of questions.