Thursday, October 05, 2006

OMFG

By now most of you have realized I am pretty unflappable. Not much you can do to make my jaw drop. Well maybe an unfortunate bit of imagery, but the point is there. Now I own a Blackberry – I have made it. During dinner tonight the Blackberry vibrates and I pointedly place in on a distant counter, never looking, and continue dinner with Carrie. A few minutes later it vibrates again and one of my children brings it to me; I glance down, dinner had ended.

An e-mail from Tom: my former therapist. Now we do not e-mail much. In fact I e-mailed him once with a simple enough question: Did I quit therapy against medical advice or was he comfortable with my taking a hiatus. In best therapist fashion he e-mailed back, but no answer to the question.

I start to read – a blast e-mail with an article he had written, part 2. I can even request part 1 – Joy. Now Blackberry’s are little things with little screens – not everything visible at once. I touch the scroll wheel.

OMFG

Did I say OMFG

It seems that when he sent this blast e-mail he did not do what you or I would do. We would send an e-mail to ourselves and BCC the world. But noooooo. He sent this to everyone in his contacts. Yes there in the To field are maybe 100 e-mail addresses, some initials and made up names, some Yahoo and Hotmail, and some to corporate sounding Domains. Now I am a fancy guy and my e-mail does not usually appear as an address: schmuck@ aol.com. No, mine shows up as a name – a first name followed by a last name. Lets just say the first name on the list is not Nate.

Did I say OMFG

Now frankly I am not really worried. The list includes his family (judging from last names) and colleagues judging from those pesky .edu’s. Did I mention that Tom’s practice specializes in gay and bi men, most deep into their closets.

Did I say OMFG

I suppose to say I am speechless 355 words into this post would seem disingenuous, but I am speechless. I tell Carrie. She is speechless. I point out that when I tell Sis she will need the cardiac paddles to be revived.

Did I say OMFG yet.

7 comments:

Paul said...

I hope you're not too exposed.

Once, one of our SVPs was emailing a close friend friend about a new girfriend. Unfortunately he clicked "SEND TO ALL." Imediately the entire office learned about the sling.

Anonymous said...

OMFG, PJF (Pigs Just Flew)-
I dont know about your state but in mine (CA) this is called a Major HIPPA Violation. Cant remember what HIPPA stands for right now but believe me, its huge! He could be fined a ton of cash for exposing his clients!-JM

Anonymous said...

I think,
Natester,
that you did in fact say
OMFG.

Maybe even more than once.
But I know the feeling...

I sent a message once from the wrong gmail account...

And you can't F'in' believe it...

Hang in there.
T@C

bear said...

Yes I believe this is a VERY bad thing. It's a violation of client/patient confidentiality and like JM said, he may have even broken the law...you don't know the negative impact this can have on your family. Bad bad bad... I'm not sure what you should do.

Anonymous said...

http://www.hipaadvisory.com/REGS/HIPAAprimer.htm

-JM

Spider said...

HIPPA - Health Information Privacy and Portability Act... and yea, he busted it BIG TIME...

Guess it depends on how violated you feel about it as to what you should do...

OMFG! LOL

Anonymous said...

Not a good thing, at all. This is something he can't fix, either.