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replygirl | 4 months ago

it's not about the individual record, it's about correlating records. if you can sequence everything in time it gets a lot easier to deanonymize data

discuss

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Macha|4 months ago

However, if your API has a (very common) createdAt field on these objects, the ability to get the creation time from the identifier is rather academic.

inopinatus|4 months ago

The concern is not limited to access of the full records. The concern extends to any incidental expression of identifiers, especially those sent via insecure side channels such as SMS or email.

In most cases this forms a compliance matter rather than an open attack vector, but it nevertheless remains that one has to answer any question along the lines "did you minimise the privacy surface?" in the negative, or at least, with a caveat.

hinkley|4 months ago

And that’s why some people are rabid about “no SELECT *”.

tracker1|4 months ago

Can you provide an example of where you would legitimately have the ID for a medical record interaction, but not a date/time associated?

tyre|4 months ago

Email is not secure but sending an email with a link to "Information about your appointment" is fine. If that link goes to `/appointments/sjdhfaskfhjaksdjf`, there is no leaked data. If it goes to `/appointments/20251017lkafjdslfjalsdkjfa`, then the link itself contains PHI.

Whether creation date is PHI…I could see the argument being yes, since it correlates to medical information (when someone sought treatment, which could be when symptoms present.)

tracker1|4 months ago

Why would you have Ids of medical events without the details of those events, generally including date+time?