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'Uber for nurses' exposes 86K+ medical records, PII via open S3 bucket

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Re: 'Uber for nurses' exposes 86K+ medical records, PII via open S3 bucket

#171

Post by Scoundreller »

game_the0ry wrote: post #144

Incredible. Healthcare is a busted industry through and through. Even the tech companies that serve it are incompetent. There are so many things wrong here: - the uber-fication of nursing, bc of cheap and corporate owned hospitals won't just hire them as w2 employees - cheapness probably led hospitals to this crappy app, which probably gave kick backs to the admins that approved it - this should totally bankrupt the…

To some extent, apps like this keep independent hospitals/providers viable.

A big bad health system will have its own “float” pool of W2 nurses or internal offer system.

Heck, that’s part of the “sell” when selling out: to get access to a robust vacation/vacancy handling system.

Re: 'Uber for nurses' exposes 86K+ medical records, PII via open S3 bucket

#172

Post by Scoundreller »

donatj wrote: post #152

Huh, I worked for an agency and built a site that was essentially "Uber for Nurses" back in 2010. I was immediately like "it's not them is it?" No, seems they shut down in 2017. As far as I know, never really took off, at least while I was maintaining it, but the gig economy wasn't in full swing yet. All that said, the sheer number of forms and amount of paperwork the site required you to fill out just to sign up had…

You were probably too early.

Covid lead to a wave of quitting, retirements, sick calls and increased health care demand so nurses could flex their spot in the market place and get the new market rate through contracting.

Re: 'Uber for nurses' exposes 86K+ medical records, PII via open S3 bucket

#173

Post by d1sxeyes »

Henchman21 wrote: post #154
d1sxeyes wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it just hasn’t been possible to differentiate as well before. One example is biscuit manufacturing, where it’s a fairly open secret that supermarket own brand biscuits are the same product as name brand, because it’s better to capture that segment at a lower margin than to lose it to competition. Tech now makes it possible to target individuals rather than demographics, but there’s nothing inherently against the…

Nothing against the status quo. Yes, let’s perpetuate our dystopian nightmare. Good plan.

Didn’t say it was a good plan, just that unless you’ve got some brilliant replacement for late-stage capitalism, it’s a logical progression.

Re: 'Uber for nurses' exposes 86K+ medical records, PII via open S3 bucket

#174

Post by localghost3000 »

I’ve worked in healthcare tech and this is pretty bad. You get fined per patient record and it’s not cheap. You also get put on a “wall of shame” where anyone who might do business with you in the future can look and see. You can also be held personally liable if you mess up. It’s really intense.

At my old job we didn’t even allow PII to pass through our API so we couldn’t accidentally log it and kept all of it in its own VPS totally isolated from the rest of our system. When we needed a record we’d put it into an S3 bucket and hand back temp link that only the caller could access (and expired within a short period of time) Total pain but you could sleep at night.

Re: 'Uber for nurses' exposes 86K+ medical records, PII via open S3 bucket

#175

Post by lotsofpulp »

crazygringo wrote: post #148
refurb wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a terrible way to estimate nurse wages. People have spouses. People’s parents pay credit cards. People with bad credit sometimes don’t care. People have family money. People with low debt can be desperate for work. Does it even work?

Agreed. And it's not just those -- if you need to pay off debt, you're extra-incentivized to take the highest -paying job, as opposed to one that pays less but is e.g. closer to home, or has a more predictable schedule, or whatever. The idea that you'd offer less seems... counterproductive to say the least.

It might not be about high pay, it might be about increasing the odds of a nurse dropped into a dysfunctional environment staying there and not bouncing on day 2 or week 2.

Re: 'Uber for nurses' exposes 86K+ medical records, PII via open S3 bucket

#176

Post by quickthrowman »

Henchman21 wrote: post #154
d1sxeyes wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it just hasn’t been possible to differentiate as well before. One example is biscuit manufacturing, where it’s a fairly open secret that supermarket own brand biscuits are the same product as name brand, because it’s better to capture that segment at a lower margin than to lose it to competition. Tech now makes it possible to target individuals rather than demographics, but there’s nothing inherently against the…

Nothing against the status quo. Yes, let’s perpetuate our dystopian nightmare. Good plan.

The post you’re replying is an ‘is’ post, not an ‘ought’ post.

Re: 'Uber for nurses' exposes 86K+ medical records, PII via open S3 bucket

#177

Post by devonbleak »

albert_e wrote: post #96

The linked article does not mention Amazon S3 or AWS Is there a different source for the "open S3 bucket" in HN title?

I had the same thought. Closest I can tell there's screenshot that looks like s3 console listing csv files if you click over far enough in the carousel.

Re: 'Uber for nurses' exposes 86K+ medical records, PII via open S3 bucket

#178

Post by piuantiderp »

richwater wrote: post #23
garciasn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if there are, it’ll be minuscule compared to what is necessary to drive effective change. The fine for one person’s information from this site should be equivalent to their entire revenue for the year; should not be permitted to be resolved by bankruptcy, and should be required to transfer to any company purchasing their assets. Their entire executive team should be jailed for a minimum of 3 years per individual…

> Their entire executive team should be jailed for a minimum of 3 years per individual offense. This is so over the top reactionary and stupid, I can't help but write off your entire comment. You want the Chief Accounting Officer to go to jail for 3 decades because of a data breach?

Maybe 5y

Re: 'Uber for nurses' exposes 86K+ medical records, PII via open S3 bucket

#179

Post by belter »

B4CKlash wrote: post #117
wewtyflakes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is abhorrent if true; truly evil behavior.

What's interesting is that broadly speaking, people acknowledge that negotiating with asymmetric information is immortal or wrong. Take the stock market for example, insider trading is illegal and you don't often hear calls to reverse these laws. But when it comes to private markets and semi-private negotiations that same sentiment doesn't easily transfer. Does society benefit in some unique way for allowing asymmetr…

That is why it should be mandatory for companies to publish the salary range for a role.
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