UK Health Clinic Accidentally Publishes HIV Status of 800 Patients

An anonymous reader writes: A sexual health clinic in London accidentally disclosed the HIV positive status of almost 800 patients. The Guardian reports: "The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has ordered an inquiry into how the NHS handles confidential medical information after the “completely unacceptable” breach of the privacy of hundreds of HIV patients. The 56 Dean Street clinic in London apologized on Wednesday after sending a newsletter on Tuesday which disclosed the names and email addresses of about 780 recipients. The newsletter is intended for people using its HIV and other sexual health services, and gives details of treatments and support.

Comments

Easy problem to solve: Ban CC:

[tigersha]

Take out CC: in mails and only allow BCC:

I seriously hate it when my friends send a mail to me with some other people and my email address is not hand-delivered to the virus and spam-harvester infested horrors of my other friends. If ALL emails only went out by BCC this would not happen.

Mail server maintainers such as Postfix/Exim and such should band together and simply phase out CC and start treating the CC header as a BCC header. And then should begin rejecting mails with a CC with multiple email addresses in it outright. This would solve half of the world's spam problems in a few years too.