back to article Oh, baby! Newborn-care website leaves database of medics wide open

A US healthcare company seemingly exposed on the public internet contact information for roughly 10,000 medical professionals. IT pro Brian Wethern said he warned Health Stream nine days ago that one of its now-removed websites had left a database of users out in the open, allowing anyone to slurp the first and last names of …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "own up to your mistakes"

    That right there is one of the hardest things to do. If you look at the history of humans, I'm sure that you will find many, many more instances of people covering up their goofs rather than admitting them and working on fixing the issue.

    I think it is a case of misplaced pride. We act as if we are perfect, we strive to impose that image on people around us, and anything that might tar that image must be suppressed.

    Before the Internet, you could maintain the illusion because nobody who didn't know you had any way of finding out. That time is over now. Maybe our species is going to learn ?

    1. quxinot

      Re: "own up to your mistakes"

      Several thousand years of history argues otherwise.

  2. sad_loser

    This is overhyped

    It is just a training database for doctors.

    Incompetent - yes, but no patient / disease details leaked.

    Will be interesting to see what the current Russian pen testing of the NHS reveals.

  3. Daniel Feenberg

    Not necessarily confidential

    In the US, at least, the MD's name and billing ID number are not confidential, but are matters of public record and available in public databases. I don't know about email addresses. This might be a bug, but it isn't a scandal.

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