Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2014 December 5

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December 5

Value of Medical Data

I have read multiple news articles that make the claim that medical data is more valuable on the black market than credit card data. Why? What is the financial benefit of gathering medical data (and I am assuming that people purchasing medical data on the black market are not intending to use it to create a heavily funded research project). 209.149.114.72 (talk) 13:31, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Just a speculation: perhaps because credit card data is highly "perishable"; while you can buy stuff with stolen credit card data, once the breech is discovered, the credit cards get cancelled, making the data worthless. It has a higher initial value, but doesn't last long. With medical data, it never "expires". You continue to be you forever, and your medical history cannot change. So the data is permanent. Your credit card numbers can be cancelled, your medical history cannot. --Jayron32 13:45, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, but that doesn't justify the value of medical data. For example, these are my personal BP values:

• 2011-09-15 114/92
• 2012-09-18 122/92
• 2013-09-02 120/88
• 2014-09-19 124/94

While you can see that I go to the doctor every September, which I doubt is worth anything to anyone, it is just a set of blood pressures. I do not see the inherent value. 209.149.114.72 (talk) 14:03, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

If someone has a full list of all your medical conditions, and what medicines you receive for those, then they can spam you with targeted ads for dodgy cheap prescriptions. If they see that you've just had a medical test, but not been told the result, they can send you a spam with a dodgy link purporting to be the result of the test. CS Miller (talk) 15:38, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I think this is getting at the true value to the black market -- spam can be a very lucrative business these days. Another potential way to get value out of medical data is if you could see that someone has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. That then opens up the person and their families to all kinds of scams- anything from peddling a fake miracle cure to swindling someone out of their home. Of course the BP info above is not that valuable. The claim is not that all medical info is valuable, but that some of it is valuable on the black market. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:06, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I asked others and I got a much different response... If you have a complete medical record for a patient, you can bill the patient's insurance company for very expensive procedures. All the patient will receive is an Explanation of Benefits statement. If you bill for procedures that you pretend took place on the patient's last visit in the real record, the patient will likely just cram it all in with the other EoB forms. 209.149.114.72 (talk) 17:46, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

• The big thing with having a lot of seemingly useless data on someone is Social engineering (security). A lot of times people can try to talk their way into getting info. If you previously worked for the phone company, you might know a lot of technical terms, and names of people and departments. Private investigators do this all the time, calling up, saying there's an emergency, can they be transfreered to some obscure office, the operator obliges adding a layer of verisimilitude by telling that office she's transferring a field tech with a downed line, and he needs to know which of two boxes does 555-1234 work out of, and then he can get a person's physical location by tracing the line even if the number is unlisted and no one would normally give him the mailing address.

If you have a big database you can just sell it for spam purposes, as mentioned above. But if someone has prescriptions for controlled drugs or ones with high black-market resale value, and you know their address and date of birth you can call the local pharmacy, say you're going on a trip, ask to have the medicine filled one day earlier at a branch in the next town over, show up, give the name and birthdate, perhaps be asked to verify the street address, and voila, you have drugs with a few thousand dollar's street value. μηδείς (talk) 18:39, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

There are some general news articles such as this one which give some of the reasons for theft. Nanonic (talk) 21:05, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Are private prosecutions possible in Wisconsin?

I'm working on the article on private prosecutions. Some time ago, I found a source that says they have been outlawed since 1855. However, there is another source that says they're possible. The information is clearly conflicting. So which is the case? --Ixfd64 (talk) 20:03, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

The second source states that "The courts of Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin allow privately compensated attorneys to assist in the prosecution of criminal cases in which the party compensating the attorney has an interest." This doesn't as I see it amount to a statement that wholly private prosecutions are permitted. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:14, 5 December 2014 (UTC)