Moving from “extremely online” to “only online” is a shift. For me, someone who could only really be described as ‘psychologically inseparable from the internet’, this feels like additional work. I’m seeing more scams goign around my family. The GOV.UK prototyping toolkit being used to make ever more convincing scam sites. But hidden in all of this are some well intentioned and pro bono things. But, often, they are falling into traps that make me pause before sharing, and if I had no secondary information about them, I would recommend that someone asking if it was legit binned it.
This site (a brochureware site for an app) was being punted around today. Unlike some of the other ones we’ve seen in the last few days, it at least has an SSL cert, so we can hope that they’ve also bought one for data from the app. But what is it? Who built it? Why is it on a domain called “joinzoe”?
If I’m trying to work out which sites that want to harvest my health data, why should I trust this one?
Designers working in health need to adhere to some rules — things are in flux and there is too much trust or blind hope in the system. Organisations that are funding these apps (especially ones that should know better like Wellcome) need to be underlining the importance of this as part of funding. Being responsible is more than helping the epidemiologists, it is important to help populations keep safe from the bullshit artists who are trying to rob them of money and data at the moment.
