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Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don't do it. |
From the Wall Street Journal:
Google’s ‘Project Nightingale’ Gathers Personal Health Data on Millions of Americans
Search giant is amassing health records from Ascension facilities in 21 states; patients not yet informed.
The article is behind a paywall but you can also read about it free at :
Windows 10 Home 22H2, Acer Aspire TC-1660 desktop + LibreOffice, non-techie
ZD Net also have an article available for free:
as do The Guardian:
“Per WSJ, Ascension is sharing complete patient health records, including lab results, diagnoses and hospitalization records — as well as patient names and dates of birth — with Google.
At least 150 Google employees have access to data on tens of millions of patients”
I bet this gives you a warm,fuzzy feeling. What could possibly go wrong?
Windows 10 Home 22H2, Acer Aspire TC-1660 desktop + LibreOffice, non-techie
The idea behind all this is to train a machine-learning algorithm to help physicians diagnose their patients’ complaints quicker and more accurately than otherwise. So the intention is good. It’s just the execution that is awful.
Training the algorithm could have been done, instead, with patients’ information properly scrubbed clean of personal identifiable information, in a walled computing environment, following privacy-safe access protocols, in servers belonging to the company, Ascension, that owns the hospitals where those patients were interned. Ascension did not have to hand their patient records over to Google, so it could keep them in its servers, where its employees could have direct access to them. What are those “privacy-safe protocols”? Well, I have no idea, but those huge brains in such “highly innovative, paradigm-changing, disruptive” businesses as Google, if motivated enough, I’m pretty sure they will think of something.
In the meantime, to help motivate them “to think of something”, next time one has to be hospitalized and as soon as able to make it, perhaps the very first telephone call should be to a lawyer.
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV
Evidently Google didn’t know quite enough about the population so it was nice of Ascension to “share” and now Google can get a pretty complete picture. Goodness knows that they need to know more to make more money off of our information (as I sit here typing this into Chrome) 
Another article: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/would-you-trust-google-with-your-medical-records-it-might-already-have-them/
Neither Google nor Ascension has notified patients or doctors about the data sharing. Ascension—a Catholic, non-profit health system—includes 34,000 providers who see patients at more than 2,600 hospitals, doctor offices, and other facilities across 21 states and the District of Columbia.
Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).
Have you considered using a different (and substantially more private) Chromium-based browser, such as Slimjet (my default browser for several years; secondary is Firefox ESR), along with additional security and privacy add-ons (such as uBlock Origin, NoScript, HTTPS Everywhere and Privacy Badger)?
Yes, I have looked around but I’ve pretty much got all the privacy controls turned off and I use Cookie AutoDelete 3.0.2 to take care of Google’s cookies (and other sites also including this one). It seems to work quite well at killing all the cookies. I also use AdBlock Plus and Start page dot com for search.
Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).
If I were a patient of Ascension, I would seriously consider filing a class action lawsuit against them for turning my medical records over to Google. This is a huge violation of the trust I would have extended them with regard to my private medical information.
The IT folks at Ascension are perfectly aware of the data harvesting that Google continually does; yet they handed the keys to the vault over to Google.
and of course one must find out if you actually have any connection with Ascension…
What has the OS got to do with it? The browser is the thing that controls web site views.
Do you have plug-ins / old browsers on that machine?
cheers, Paul
Mele20: Your interesting comment has got my attention.
Last time I checked, some months ago, the Washington Post was still letting people read a certain number of articles before bringing the paywall curtain down. The WSJ was letting non-subscribers see the beginning of articles and complete videos (I just checked, and still it is like that). Can you actually read an unlimited number of complete articles from the WP and the WSJ?
I doubt that the software that is used, including the browser, should make a difference. A newspaper’s paywalled site is, supposedly, designed to require either a login from those that already have a subscriber’s account, or an application for having such an account open, before allowing wide access to unlimited number of whole articles. Unless there is a bug in the Web site software, but the same bug in two different newspaper sites? Perhaps both sites using the same software with the same bug?
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV
NoScript??
NoScript??
That would be the way I would deal with this. I currently have ALL Google scripts blocked in NoScript except for Google Maps. I recently decided to allow Google Maps because I felt it was the least harmful of the many ways that Google spys, and lots of stuff I want to access simply won’t work if I don’t allow Google Maps.
After a short amount of time, it has become second nature to scroll through the NoScript list and block or allow whatever I want. And over time I have learned some useful information. For example, I have learned that Google Scripts run in the background on almost every website on the internet. Everywhere you go they are running – and NoScript allows you to see this.
Everywhere, that is, except on Microsoft websites. NoScript has caused me to be a huge fan of Microsoft, because I can see that Microsoft runs only their own scripts on their own websites; and Microsoft scripts don’t run on anyone else’s websites. In other words, Microsoft doesn’t have their tentacles everywhere, spying on everyone on planet earth, like Google does.
Having said that, I don’t know what data are being collected via Windows Telemetry; but I suspect that it is harmless and generally related to making Windows better and more secure.
I am often amused by people loudly complaining about Microsoft “spying”, while those same people are silent about Google spying. If you want to see the extent of Google spying, surf the web with Firefox, with NoScript running. Click the NoScript button on every website you visit, and you will be absolutely shocked to see the universality of Google spying literally everywhere you go.
Others may disagree but sometimes using NoScript slows down the loading of pages, seems one script is waiting for another that is being blocked. While I am still using NS as I have not found suitable alternatives ( scripts and cross site stuff being blocked not just ads which I tend to put up with as part of the whole WWW experience as needed to pay for infrastructure )
I have often thought that sites should list just what is needed to run for their site to function. I find even if I allow “all scripts on page” to run that is not sufficient, I may need to select that option several times.
I know yammer yammer!!!
I block Google Maps and only NoScript, Temporarily Allow when it is need.
Another interesting article:
Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).
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