Most of my therapy clients and I think people in general are not worried enough about online security and assume that messages they send to me are secure. But for many years now I have been worried about this — not losing sleep over it, just concerned and trying to educate myself about this.
In my profession we are required to do whatever we can to safeguard clients’ information and keep it in accordance with Data Protection Laws and the rules of our profession. I can protect the data on my computer and also in my physical filing system. But once we use services like WhatsApp, which are not so secure, everything is out of my hands.
I will stop using WhatsApp on my phone in the near future and will disconnect my account in the next couple of weeks. I have installed an app called Signal and will be using it instead. It’s open source and free to use, does exactly what WhatsApp does but it is heavily encrypted, so if you send me a message no one can read it except me.
Please download Signal from your app store and see how you go. I think you’ll find it’s working perfectly fine…
(You might think I am paranoid but I think it’s about privacy and confidentiality and my responsibility to my clients).
https://signal.org