Update Sept. 12, 2024: Our letter was covered by Daily News , Chalkbeat , State Scoop and K12 Dive so far. We just learned that Talkspace, the parent company of Teenspace, has been sued in California for sharing the personal information of website visitors and those who signed up for accounts with TikTok, including the info of minors.
note: corrected email address for Ann Williams-Isom is [email protected]
Sept. 10, 2024
See below and here: a letter sent today to NYC Mayor Adams, Chancellor Banks, the NYC Health Commissioner, and the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services. The letter was written and signed by the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, NYCLU and AI for Families, and expresses our collective privacy concerns with the Teenspace telehealth mental health service. The city is paying $26 million for this service, which has been widely promoted by the Mayor and NYC DOE to be used by NYC students.
Teenspace is owned by a company called Talkspace and collects a huge amount of very sensitive personal information from teens before they even can create accounts or access the privacy policy – and much of this information would be barred from collection by the federal student privacy law PPRA without parental consent or opt out if the district had contracted for these services rather than the city’s Department of Health. The list of these questions is included in the appendix to our letter.
To make things worse, Talkspace says personal student data can be used for marketing purposes, which would be prohibited by the NY Student privacy law 2D, again if the DOE had signed the contract.
In 2022, several US Senators wrote to Talkspace, pointing out how the company also appeared to be taking advantage of a “regulatory gray area” in HIPAA, to exploit their patients’ data for profit.
Especially with all the breaches and misuse of student data by DOE contractors, the privacy of NYC students should be better protected than this. Finally, there have been widespread consumer complaints about Talkspace’s inadequate counseling services and overcharging of clients. All of this and more is touched on in our letter below.