Privacy is for everyone

 Privacy rules aren't there to protect people from strangers. Privacy rules are there to protect people from their families.

I don't want strangers accessing my confidential information, but, outside of the very real threat of financial identity theft, strangers aren't the ones who can use my confidential information to hurt me. I might be lucky enough to have a supportive and non-abusive family, but not everyone is.

Privacy rules protect people from abusive spouses. From controlling parents. From nosy, gossiping neighbors who can get word back to abusers. From that annoying aunt who wants to remind you for the 47th time that your cholesterol is too high and potato chips are bad for you. Whatever it is, you have a right to be free from it and keep your family out of your business.

Over and over, I see people breaking privacy rules or demanding exceptions to them, because the information they want to access is their family's, or someone they know. Privacy doesn't mean THEM, right? He's her son! She's his wife! He's her neighbor she's known since kindergarten!

Privacy is supposed to mean them to. It's supposed to mean ESPECIALLY them.

Since I've started helping a consenting disabled family member with bureaucratic tasks, I'm constantly astonished and appalled by how easy it is. People freely talk to me and give me information with no attempt to verify that I have permission to access it. I don't need it, right? I'm family! I could be an abuser, a murderer, a blackmailer, anything, but as long as I have the same last name as the person whose information I want, no one interferes.

Professionals, please stop giving "family" leeway. Privacy rules exist for a reason. Please enforce them.