As a mental health professional, you should be aware that the internet makes it easy – far too easy – for anyone to find your home address and phone number online. Just a five-minute search is usually all it takes.
Protection is Available
Our IronWall360 service uses proprietary technology to scan the internet every day, and when we find the address or phone number of someone under our protection, we make sure the website removes that content. It’s not a request – we don’t give them a choice.
Learn how to remove your private information (address, phone number) from the Internet
This is information that should not be accessible to your patients. The number of cases in which psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists are attacked by those they are trying to help is staggering.
Social worker Eva Gawronski, her husband and infant daughter were attacked in their Los Angeles home by one of her former patients. The man waited until the family entered the house, poured gasoline through a window and lit it with an emergency traffic flare.
Psychologist David Fox and his family were standing in their driveway in suburban Los Angeles when a former patient of Fox’s stepped from the bushes and opened fire on the family with a .38-caliber pistol. Fox was killed in the attack.
A person being treated for schizophrenia murdered New York psychologist Kathryn Faughey and attempted to kill psychiatrist Kent Shinbach.
The evolution of the Internet and social media has only heightened the risk of similar attacks. Violent assaults may be rare, but attacks against therapists--and sometimes their families -- are of growing concern to mental health workers. Most of these professionals deal with hundreds of patients every year and many thousands over a career. All it takes is one to bring about a tragedy.
Get a Free, No-Obligation Privacy Report
Thousands of people that work in law enforcement and criminal justice are already under IronWall protection – along with their spouses and children. That means their address can’t be found online.
Can we find yours? We’ll conduct a search using the same methods and tools developed for our online protection service, and provide you with a partial listing of sites and companies that have either published your private information, or will sell it to anyone who asks.
