This week's post is concerns the clear problem of privacy and security that MobileMed might face. Considering MobileMed is a medical app-- and medical information and data is kept as the utmost of private manners-- this poses quite a threat to the prospective application. I've outlined a few possible problems or concerns that might arise:
- Easy access to medical information
- Access to past history
- Possible access to social security
- Problems with failure and/or mis-sending of information due to network issues
Unfortunately, this app wouldn't have the ability to shut itself off when users aren't utilizing it's services, but one thing we can do to protect against identity theft and better protect the privacy of each individual using the app is revoking the ability to be continuously signed in. MobileMed would then be a by-use basis application, requiring sign-in and social security information in order to gain access to the expansive good that this app can provide. Of course, this doesn't protect against identity theft, but we can do our best to combat this as well. Settings would have the ability to monitor your progress from a home computer, showing not only what you want to see about yourself, but tracking what you (or, God forbid, someone else) is doing within our application. Again, unlike most apps, MobileMed would not have the ability to post your information or anything that happens on our app to any site, search engine, nor be saved in the cache as a page that can be accessed without going through our complete sign-in phase.
It's understood that at the base of this application is privacy and security, but these basic measures would be the first steps to what would be an extensive protection against identity theft and information theft. I feel that this application is a viable and resourceful one, and if these precautions were put in place, it would pave the way for an extremely successful, useful, safe, and secure application that the world would love.
-Alex Rajaniemi
You make a good point that we all have these other information hand accessible, yet we lack to have our medical information that handy. I think that this would be an effective way to get that information, but it is crucial that those personal information does not get out. Privacy and security would play a very important roll in having this app. I would suggest that you could use security keys like the way bank account works. However, if you could figure out a solution to properly securing the information, I think this could work out well.
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