Privacy concerns raised on Mass. medical marijuana e-mails
It’s deja vu all over again. First it was postal mail from Health Canada. Now it’s e-mail from Massachusetts. Kay Lazar reports:
The subject line left little doubt about the contents of the e-mail sent by the Massachusetts health department. “Confirmation of Patient Certification in the Medical Use of Marijuana Online System,” it stated.
More than 6,800 patients received the e-mails over the past three months telling them they had been approved for the state’s medical marijuana program. The e-mails contained detailed personal information — a practice specialists say constituted a clear violation of privacy standards.
Now, after inquiries from the Globe, the state’s health department has begun altering its e-mails, stripping references to the medical marijuana program from the subject line and removing patients’ full names and unique program registration numbers from the body of the message.
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