The state of medical privacy has become quite appalling lately. I started using a young doctor in a new office and they are gung ho on modern tech. That’s fine to some extent but they want to send me invoices and all correspondence via e-mail. No PGP of course. I did an MX lookup on their vanity email address & it resolves to an MS Outlook server.
I asked them for my test results. They offered to email them.
My response: I do not want sensitive medical info coming by e-mail via Microsoft’s servers. I did not give you a copy of my email address for that reason. It needs to be snail-mailed to me.
Perhaps of greater concern is that the receptionist acted like I am making a unusual request, and that they do not mail things. Apparently I am the only patient who has a problem with sensitive medical info going to Microsoft. So the receptionist is investigating whether she can get approval to mail me my results by post.
I wonder if someone in that clinic will have to run out and buy stamps because I have a problem with Microsoft.
Email providers are not equals. W.r.t the infosec nuts and bolts, sure it’s the same disclosure. But to say that the risk is the same for a giant surveillance advertiser who has mastered exploiting the data as the risk would be to a provider like Disroot is grasping. It neglects the trust factor. Both instances require trust, but in the case of MS that trust is unobtainable.
Threat models matter. Mass surveillance is in my threat model (and it should be in everyone’s). A small email provider looking to secretly target me is not in my threat model.
Microsoft profiting from my data (even if not sensitive) is also a problem for me. I do not email any MS user for any reason because I boycott MS. That’s not an infosec move but an activist move to not feed a pernicious giant.
While you aren’t wrong about the threat model, you do have to be clear with them that email isn’t an acceptable transport in any way for sensitive data. Email is an inherently insecure model, and anyone in the middle of the conversation can read that traffic. It doesn’t have to be a malicious email provider, just someone with access to a transit network.
I think you’re saying this because I have no way as a sender or recipient to ensure or verify TLS is in play at every hop, correct? Otherwise, if TLS is in force by both providers then I would only expect the email providers (and their hosting providers) to have access.
Yes, that’s exactly correct.