Tuesday 16 September 2014

Psychologist appt - the price of a leak

I had some concerns at yesterdays psychologist appt as for a few days had been feeling pretty bloody low. It seemed for little reason, and it was hard for me to narrow down where all this was coming from.

As we talked though it became more clear what was going on. What had in effect been some kind of a trigger that had set off a chain of depressive dark thoughts about life.
I started relating how I'd felt after the breach of information in one of the studies I was in and resigned from over it (all the participants email addresses were sent out with a mass email). I'd felt hurt and betrayed that such a stupid thing could happen in this day and age, a mistake at the level of a PC Neaderthal FFS. I went further and said what I'd mentioned to David a day or so before, that I almost felt violated by it. That now there's this fuckin email list out there, one would hope would be treated responsibly with, but at the same time who knows where just one of the mass emails might end up? The mind boggles. 

The psychologist thought it was very understandable that I'd feel like that. And with the horror few months David and I have had, adding something like that to the whole mix may very well lead to a spiral of depression.

As it turns out, he was very interested at what had happened in the study and in fact had some knowledge of it. He was shocked at what I said had happened, such a huge breach of information security over such a basic computer mistake. I said I'd send him the nice apology letter sent to all the participants from a professor as he was really interested to read it.

I have a feeling this breach is going to become rather infamous around the world of doing studies and research. 

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