{"id":1732833,"date":"2022-10-31T13:59:23","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T17:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress-1016567-4521551.cloudwaysapps.com\/?post_type=station&p=1732833"},"modified":"2022-10-31T18:36:44","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T22:36:44","slug":"psychotherapy-extortion-suspect-arrest-warrant-issued","status":"publish","type":"station","link":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/plato-data\/psychotherapy-extortion-suspect-arrest-warrant-issued\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychotherapy extortion suspect: arrest warrant issued"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\t\t\t\t\tby<\/span>
\n\t\t\tPaul Ducklin<\/a>\t\t<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n

Imagine that you\u2019d spoken in what you thought was total confidence to a psychotherapist, but the contents of your sessions had been saved for posterity, along with precise personal identification details such as your unique national ID number, and perhaps including additional information such as notes about your relationship with your family\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026and then, as if that were not bad enough, imagine that the words you\u2019d never expected to be typed in and saved at all, let alone indefinitely, had been made accessible over the internet, allegedly \u201cprotected\u201d by little more than a default password giving anyone access to everything.<\/p>\n

Now imagine, some time later (according to some reports, the company that ran the clinic suffered data breaches in 2018 and 2019, but the overt criminality surrounding the stolen data didn\u2019t start until 2020), that your deepest secrets, and those of tens of thousands of other trusting patients, were used in a blackmail attempt against the company.<\/p>\n

And then, given that the company itself didn\u2019t pay up (and what good would that have done anyway, given that the data was already out there \u201cin the wild\u201d?), imagine that you received a blackmail demand yourself, putting the squeeze on you to pay EUR200 to \u201csuppress\u201d the publication of those not-so-private-after-all talks where you had unburdened yourself to a therapist whom you reasonably assumed would keep your secrets secret.<\/p>\n

Remember that the stolen data included things you\u2019d said about your family and others close to you\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026and then imagine, as Wired magazine wrote in 2021<\/a> in the case of a youngster who had become an adult in the interim, if the extortionist had also contacted other people whose personal information appeared in your note, and menaced them for money, too.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how the data breach saga apparently unfolded at an infamous Finnish heathcare provider, now bankrupt, called Psychotherapy Centre Vastaamo<\/strong>.<\/p>\n