P2P Threatens Health Record Privacy Too
Peer-to-peer sharing software seems to be the bane of Internet security, particularly in privacy terms. Records of highly classified materials (like the schematics of the president’s helicopter) have been found on P2P networks along with records of confidential ethics investigations undertaken by Congress.
Personal health records can also be added to the list. In a recent article which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, researchers discovered that personal health information that is stored on home computers are vulnerable to widespread dissemination via P2P technology.
Researchers found that it personal medical records that are taken home by health care professionals can be leaked inadvertently over the Internet via P2P applications, compromising a patient’s confidentiality. Dr. Khaled El Emam, Canada Research Chair in Electronic Health Information and lead author of the study, said “Computer users may be unaware that sensitive information in their personal files on their personal computers can be exposed to other users, because some vendors use software containing dangerous sharing features.”
The research team employed popular P2P software to download personal health records and financial data on individuals residing in the US and Canada. The researchers also found evidence that other individuals were actively searching out the information, likely with the intent to exploit it.
“There is no obvious innocent reason why anyone would be looking for this kind of information,” said Dr. El Emam. “Very simple search terms were quite effective in returning sensitive documents.”
While only a small percentage of the sample set contained personal health records, with millions of P2P users, this percentage amounts to thousands of personal health records being available on the networks.
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Hang on, you can get anything from the net anyhow and worse.