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School knows about me? Privacy rights?

Fluttershy

Fluttershy

Well-Known Member
As some background information, I was diagnosed when I was 12 and I had an IEP in school until I finished high school. When I entered college, I chose not to disclose my mental health status. Made it through undergrad just fine on my own. Now I'm in grad school.
I just got an email on my school email address from a speech professor (who I've never had), asking me to participate in a survey about being a student with autism. How would they know this? Is this a breach of privacy? Has it been following me around college the whole time? Have I only been getting good grades because my teachers have known? I've never been approached about it before.
 
Fluttershy said:
As some background information, I was diagnosed when I was 12 and I had an IEP in school until I finished high school. When I entered college, I chose not to disclose my mental health status. Made it through undergrad just fine on my own. Now I'm in grad school.
I just got an email on my school email address from a speech professor (who I've never had), asking me to participate in a survey about being a student with autism. How would they know this? Is this a breach of privacy? Has it been following me around college the whole time? Have I only been getting good grades because my teachers have known? I've never been approached about it before.
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Something about this sounds illegal in many ways. I'm not an attorney but you may want to consult one. A professor should be unable to access your health information without written consent. The same goes for the privacy of your educational records.

If I suspected that this happened to me, they would be renaming the college I went to to Wanderer03 University. I would throw the civil/tort law book at them.
 
Unfortunately in this day and age between intrusive technology and marketing, the breach of your privacy may have many considerations as to its source. Only you can really backtrack and deduce who you may have told what to...and how aggressive they may be in exploiting what they think they know about you.

You also should be aware that with such "cold calls" that they might also be criminal in nature, reflecting attempts at fraud, extortion or more likely identity theft.

Frankly you might want to consider this bit of logic. Professional medical sources must be concerned about privacy concerns by law. Those pretending to be as such clearly don't care about the law, let alone the ethics of a scam.

Trust no one. Personally I would simply delete the email and not give it the slightest consideration. Take no chances.
 
Please disregard this thread. I reread the email about 8 times and I think it's a global email asking autistic students in particular to come forward. I just got nervous because of the weird coincidence.
 
Fluttershy said:
Please disregard this thread. I reread the email about 8 times and I think it's a global email asking autistic students in particular to come forward. I just got nervous because of the weird coincidence.
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Never the less, it's good to be cognizant of the incredible degree of criminal fraud going on these days. You should be nervous. What might appear to be very obvious may not at all.

I'm a constant target of such attempts, simply based on my age group. There's no reason to exclude those in other groups of people, especially if they are considered in general to be "gullible" by criminals.

The legitimate harvesting of data on people (a violation of privacy in itself) has been hijacked by criminals, making it difficult to differentiate one from the other.
 
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Well, my girlfriend didn't get the email. They have to know somehow. Could my high school have forwarded my IEP back in 2010?
 
Fluttershy said:
Well, my girlfriend didn't get the email. They have to know somehow. Could my high school have forwarded my IEP back in 2010?
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It's possible but unlikely. Educational privacy laws prevent the disclosure of that information without your express written permission.
 
Even though your diagnosis is held to be private, special services that you may have received in primary & secondary schools are likely a part of your transcript, so someone could surmise that you had a learning disability without knowing which one it was. A specific set of services could be even more indicative of your diagnosis, like speech therapy & social skills training.
 
Congratulations on coping in higher education without help. I'm glad it turned out to be a blanket email rather than someone disregarding privacy. I can however guarantee that no serious educational institution would mark your work less stringently than other students. Being a current student myself I know I've never recieved more marks than appropriate due to my dyslexia or aspergers diagnosis.
 
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