Source: Malone.news
True Story: The Health app built into iPhones is now collecting as much personal information on the mental health of each and every one of us as they can get a hold of.
Yet, a search on Google and Brave yielded no results on the dangers of sharing such information over the phone or internet. Seriously, no single MSM has done an article on why such data sharing might be a bad idea?
To start, in sharing such data, you aren’t just sharing your information, iphone knows exactly who your family members are. In many cases, those phones are connected via family plans.
iPhone mental health assessments not only ask questions about your mental health but can also infer the mental health status of family members, as demonstrated by the image publicly shared by phone on the benefits of a phone mental health assessment.
What could possibly go wrong?
Although iPhone has historically been known to keep user data “safe,” this is not a given, and there have been hacks and data breaches over the years.
Crowd Strike happened – from just a simple coding error. In 2015, all of my confidential data given to the DoD and the FBI in order to get a security clearance was harvested by the Chinese government, when they hacked into the government’s “super-secret”, and “super-secure” government data storage site. In response, the government offered me a credit report and monitoring of my credit score for a year. Yeah – thanks.
Bottom line- no data is 100% secure, and this is mental health data. Data that might be extremely embarrassing, career-damaging, or has the potential to disrupt family relationships. Remember, no one knows what new laws, regulations, or mores might come to pass years from now. This type of information should not be harvested and stored.
Furthermore, trusting that iPhone will never sell that data or pass it off to research groups is very naive. In fact, mental health data is already being mined.
Apple has partnered with various health organizations and academic institutions to conduct health-related studies, such as Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the University of Michigan on various health studies. Apple also collaborates with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on a Digital Mental Health Study. This study likely utilizes data collected through Apple devices to investigate mental health patterns and outcomes. Trusting that the user identifiers have been completely stripped before that data is passed on is a risk that one takes when entering such information into an iPhone.
“Connect with resources.”
So how does Apple benefit? At this time, it appears that Apple is selling advertising of various mental health services by “connecting” services to people’s phones. Apple writes that “These assessments can help users determine their risk level, connect to resources available in their region, and create a PDF to share with their doctor.”
That might mean that one presses the depressed button in the mental health assessment, apple will place ads the search engine for anti-depressants or physicians that prescribe them.
Why would that example be relevant, and which pharmaceutical companies might benefit?
Iphone has developed their mental health assessment with an “educational grant” from Pfizer!
Pfizer manufactures and sells Zoloft, Effexor, Pristiq, and Sinequan formulations. Together the sales revenue for these drugs is in the billions each year:
From 2015 to 2018, 13.2% of American adults reported taking antidepressant medication within the past 30 days, with sertraline (Zoloft) being one of the most common. Even off-patent, there were 39.2 million prescriptions filled with an annual sales revenue of 470 million….