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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

That could be great, because it could also enable "someone you've been with reported sick, get tested" which would remove a lot of awkward interactions / barriers for reporting. Then again... do we really want dating apps with more or less full network and history of STIs of its users?

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A possibly good idea, but needs protections against false alarms (such as somebody pranking anonymously all their previous contacts), or people will start to abuse it and later other people will start ignoring the alarms.

I am not sure how to solve this. Perhaps a certified doctor could trigger that alarm and nobody else.

Seems like it'd be dipping into HIPAA territory at that point.

You're saying that, in such a scenario, dating apps might be considered health care providers in some jurisdictions?

That would have nothing to do with HIPAA. HIPAA generally only covers patient information held by health providers, payers, etc. It only applies to "covered entities", which is a specific set of entities. It's a myth that HIPAA applies to health information generally. There's even dispute about whether or not HIPAA applies to doctors and medical services who don't accept insurance ( https://www.lebauerconsulting.com/hipaa-is-my-cash-practice-... )

(although some states have more strict health privacy laws)

HIPPA is a societal choice. We can change it.

This would be a voluntary self-disclosure. Similar to current restaurant COVID contract tracing projects.

Well, it's self-disclosure, and it could be implemented in such a way that your health information isn't really shared with anyone. A message like "One of your recent matches reported a concern about an STD. It might be a good idea to get tested." doesn't necessarily reveal much personal information.

It seems to work for covid trackers app. Can't the same techniques be applied to dating app data ?

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