

Ask HN: How does Twitter know who my former therapist was? - the_cat_kittles

I got an email today with suggestions of people to follow, including my former therapist. This was a little surprising because he only has 13 followers and follows 5 people. My only guess is this information came from email and browsing behavior that was collected and sold to twitter? Does anyone have a good explanation?
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27182818284
Your therapist probably gave permission for Twitter to scan their phone's or
computer's contacts and it found your email. Then it recommended them to you.
My phone's notification bar had an offer from Twitter to help me find more
friends this way just this morning.

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the_cat_kittles
I see, this sounds very likely. It seems like this is irresponsible on the
part of the therapist to essentially disclose a patient list to a third party.
Do you know if there is any kind of legislation about this?

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subrat_rout
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. But this is very
unprofessional from the therapist side. You perhaps should contact your
therapist as soon as possible and let him/her know that there is a breach of
trust. Also read about HIPAA(Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act).

[http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/summary/i...](http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/summary/index.html)

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bill_from_tampa
This is why docs should not participate in "social media" that require or
recommend registration using real names. It is difficult to fully
compartmentalize one's life to the degree required (ie, if you ever spoke to a
doc on his cellphone your name may be in the contact list). I'm sure some
professionals (docs) want to use Twitter or Facebook as advertising, but there
are real security risks, as this situation illustrates.

I would suggest you let your therapist know what happened - he (?she) may be
unaware of what happened and he/she may want to take action to prevent
repetition.

