Since we’re all so excited at the prospect of putting medical records online, can we talk, for a moment, about security? A techie friend of mine told me recently about a nefarious site that somehow manages to mimic whatever site you think you’re going to — a shadow jcrew.com, for example, or a shadow Orbitz, or Expedia, or Staples, anyplace where you might be about to provide your credit card information on that very secure order page. The evil-twin site has figured out how to draw you from the site you think you’re going to, to an exact replica, without you having any idea that you’ve just entered an alien cyberplanet. When you pay for your new home office paper shredder, or the cunning flats with the satin bows, the money goes not to the retailer but to the villainous creators of the replica site. You’ve been had – and besides, you never get what you ordered.
I mention this because everyone swears that the medical records sites are going to be absolutely positively secure — which in the world of the internet too often means only that reasonable people won’t be able to get at the information. Unreasonable people? They could well have a heyday finding out that you’re HIV positive, or that you recently received treatment for an STD, or that you have an eminently treatablet but possibly prejudicial cancer.
Read More – Karen Stabiner, on Huffington Post