🏢👿Corporate Tech Monopolies are Going to Ruin Therapy

Read the article here: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/corporate-tech-monopolies-are-going-tto-ruin-therapy/

 

Last weekend BetterHelp, the online subscription therapy company, settled with the FTC for almost 8 million in fines for selling therapy patients confidential information to Facebook and Snapchat. This isn’t justice, so hold your applause. 

The company, whose name really is the word better and help smashed together with no space between them has had issues before. A quick google search reveals customer reviews claiming the company is as good at therapy as it is at punctuation. The company previously faced controversy for allegedly paying youtube influencers to vlog about invented mental health conditions that they claimed the company's treatment had “cured”. Since these influencers have and audience of children and young adults who look up to them, these potential lies are especially worrisome. Some of these influencers purportedly received thousands of dollars in compensation for the alleged lies. 

Real patients seeking a cure from better help have reported getting hit with recurring subscription fees, therapists that repeatedly no show and charge you anyway, as well as getting slammed with hours of paperwork that takes up all the allotted time. If true, this is a shady practice but not illegal. 

So why is the sale of data such a big deal? Put simply it's a big deal because if I did it to one patient I would lose my license and potentially get sued. The FTC has just set a precedent that big companies can now do this to millions of people with impunity. Fines, like the 7.8 million that BetterHelp is returning to consumers is a cost of doing business for these companies. They take the risk because they make more money breaking the law than they pay in fines. 

Because this would have put anyone else in court. 

When you go to therapy there is more than just an expectation that what you talk about will be kept private. HIPPA laws mean that if your therapist knowingly discloses information about you they are breaking the law. You can sue them, their board can take their license, insurance panels can drop them and you can sue them civilly. This is if one therapist knowingly shares the data of a single patient. 

Here it happened to millions of people. This was not an accident either. BetterHelp intentionally did this WHILE telling customers specifically that they would never do the thing that they were secretly doing. 

BetterHelp removed all of the links I posted to these news articles from their social media in an effort to not have to be associated with their own behavior. That is strange since BetterHelp also claims that they did nothing wrong in their statement about the settlement. 

“This settlement, which is no admission of wrongdoing, allows us to continue to focus on our mission".

You read that right. Either BetterHelp misspelled “I’m sorry” or they really think they did nothing wrong. Let's hope they are as bad at spelling as punctuation. People with antisocial personality disorder have no regard for right and wrong despite getting caught and experiencing consequences. People with this disorder need therapy but here a possible inference is that they appear to be providing it.  

BetterHelp also goes on to say in their statement that all the information sold to Facebook was encrypted and non identifiable despite the fact that they released the emails of users. My email address, [e-mail], is pretty effective at letting someone identify who I am. 

Betterhelp released emails of users. If they are using betterhelp, they are seeking mental health treatment. They also released information regarding prior mental health treatment. According to the complaint:

Some of the intake questions that BetterHelp sold to facebook identified whether patients had been in therapy before. Below is from the official complaint:

“For example, though an affirmative response to the question “Have you been in counseling or therapy before?” was coded as “AddToWishlist,” the analyst revealed to Facebook that this event meant that the “user completes questionnaire marking they have been in therapy before, thereby disclosing millions of Visitors’ and Users’ prior therapy to Facebook.”

BetterHelp claims this is not protected information because it didn'