Latest news with #snooping
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Parents Who've Snooped Through Their Kids' Stuff Are Sharing The Weirdest Things They Found, And I Wasn't Ready For Some Of These
Sometimes, parents just can't help but get in their kids' business. But when you go snooping, you might find things you were never meant to see, from the perplexing to the downright horrifying. This was the topic of discussion in an AskReddit thread, where u/SensitiveCorner2379 asked, "Parents who've snooped through their teenagers' stuff, what's the weirdest thing you've ever come across?" Here's what all the nosy parents and their kids had to say: 1."I went to my 10-year-old daughter's school for parent-teacher conferences and opened her locker to take a look inside. There wasn't much in it, but lying at the bottom was a book from our local library about how to plan a wedding. Not a fun one with pictures of wedding dresses and stuff. It was called Wedding Rites: A Complete Guide to Traditional Vows, Music, Ceremonies, Blessings and Interfaith Services. I was baffled, and her teachers and I had a good laugh about it. When I got home and asked her about it, she explained she and her bestie were trying to marry their dogs to each other." —u/ghostguessed 2."My mom was going through my sister's room after she returned from a trip to Berlin. Nothing wild, just getting her laundry together. She found a small baggie of white dust and rocks. She tasted it to see if she could recognize the drug, and when she couldn't, she confronted my sister. It was small pieces of the Berlin Wall that my sister had chipped off as a keepsake. My mother ate the Berlin Wall." —u/briesneeze 3."An entire dresser drawer of dirty dishes and silverware." —u/Hour_Mathematician83 4."I don't snoop, but I do clean and organize from time to time. My teen knows this, and also knows that unless I find some really illegal shit, I'm not really worried. Having said that, I found a suit of armor he had made out of watermelon rinds that he forgot to toss out. Whole new ecosystem growing on it all." —u/OddLeeEnough 5."For my youngest, the worst thing we've found is a fart bag where she and her bestie were trying to save up farts. They had one at her bestie's house too — her mom made them throw it out, saying it was 'unsanitary.' I just howled and left it alone. A fart bag. Hilarious, why didn't I ever try that as a kid?!" —u/wimwood 6."My son was 15 at the time. I went into his room and tried to get him to clean it, because it was a damn disaster area. I was ranting at him, 'Look at all the garbage all over the floor! Look at the dirty dishes!' Then I spotted a drinking glass, like a pint glass, on the floor. I said, 'You have GLASS on the FLOOR where you could step on it and slice your foot wide open!' I leaned down and picked it up. It had stuff in it. I took a closer look. He had stuffed it with a couple of socks at the bottom and taped a nitrile glove over the top. The glass was slippery in my hand. I stood there looking at it with dawning horror as I realized that I'd found his homemade Fleshlight. I just set it down on the floor and walked out. We've never spoken of it since." —u/edgarpickle 7."I was the teenager getting snooped on. I had undiagnosed schizophrenia at the time, and I was building a time machine from old PC parts that I got from people's trash. Thankfully, my mom found it because the way I'd designed it, I was going to electrocute myself to send myself back in time. Unfortunately, when I found my time machine was gone, I thought the government was onto me and basically kicked myself out of the house so they wouldn't find me. I was 14 or 15 at the time. I'm medicated now and doing much better these days." —u/konoha37 8."A full human turd inside of an empty face wipe container. No toilet paper. I was more concerned than if I'd found a baggie of pot." —u/MooseMaster6000 9."'Science' experiments. Like the insides of stress balls emptied out. Hair gel mixed with glue. Glue mixed with stress ball goop. Pencils with layers of glue, like they'd been dipped. Glued fuzzy sticks — 'art,' apparently." —u/MsPennyP 10."My mom would snoop when I was a teenager. I got a diary and hid it. When she found it and opened it, all she found was, 'THOUGHT YOU FOUND SOMETHING GOOD, HUH?' in big writing. She laughed about it for the next 20-plus years. I miss her." —u/22grey 11."When I was a teen, my dad found homemade dildos I made out of pencils taped together, a sock, more tape, and Saran Wrap. He knew what it was and was mad. I wish he'd left it alone, but he confronted me, and I was adamant it was actually an art project. So, I painted them and left them on display to dry for weeks to try to prove my point." —u/salmontoothpaste 12."I once found the Subway wrapper to my sub that he 'helped me look for' five months prior — when I was eight months pregnant — under his bed. I was looking forward to that sub so badly. It had tomatoes and banana peppers on it, and when I saw he had taken them all off, it sent me into a rage. It just disappeared, and he helped me look for it in the refrigerator. It's been over seven years, he's 17 now, and I still bring it up." —u/Jaylamarie333 13."A rusted train nail. Not snooping. She folded it up in a sweatshirt to keep it safe, and I was putting away laundry. She thought it was an artifact. Couldn't believe something could be that rusty without being 100 years old." —u/SideBackground6932 14."When I was 19, I came home from a night out with my girlfriends to my mother, hysterical and crying, dramatically asking, 'How could you do this to me?!' She had found a sandwich bag with an unknown substance in it and somehow came to the conclusion that it was heroin, and I had secretly turned into a person addicted to drugs. It was small, bacon-flavored dog treats for our chihuahua, which I had portioned out so they wouldn't get stale. Pretty obvious that my mother had no idea what heroin looked like." —u/forestfairygremlin 15."Searching the kids' internet histories. Kid one: porn. So much porn. Kid two: 'How tall is the tallest bridge?' 'What layers can you see in the Grand Canyon?' 'Happy goat videos.' Kids, man." —u/AltrusiticChickadee 16."I was like 13, living in a rural area, and my best friend at the time was always up to something. For some reason, we got it in our heads that we could secretly raise chickens in the forest behind my house, so we bought an entire chicken starter kit, complete with feed, lights, and a book on how to do it right. We attempted to shoplift a few baby chicks in her sweater from the farm supply store, but got caught on the way out. The plan never materialized because no one would sell us baby chicks. Later, my mother found the starter stuff in my closet. It was a weird conversation. She was expecting to find drugs. She was mainly mad that the store didn't call her when we got caught attempting to shoplift baby chicks." —u/ingracioth 17."I found a notebook labeled 'Top Secret Plans.' Inside was a full blueprint for how they'd fake sick to skip school, complete with fake cough sound effects and backup crying strategy if I didn't buy it. I was half impressed, half offended. They even wrote: 'Mom might pretend to be mad, but she'll secretly respect the hustle.' They were right." —u/DeadBoneMusic 18."My dad was moving my car in the driveway, yelling out the car window about how it smelled like pot. He reached into the center console and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, 'And what about these?? I thought you didn't smoke cigarettes!' 'I don't, they're crayons.' Sure enough, the cigarette box was full of crayons. I was a stoner, not a cigarette smoker." —u/wildjabali 19."After he moved out, I found a huge pencil case with every single pen he had used throughout high school, like 90+ pens, all completely out of ink. I messaged him about it, and he's like, 'yeah, that's my pen graveyard,' like it was the most normal thing ever. It's not a homemade Fleshlight, but it definitely made me pause and wonder what kind of hoarder I'd created." —u/SternFern 20."A bucket full of snapping turtle eggs. My kid and their friend saw the turtle nesting, robbed the nest, and stashed the eggs near the heater, hoping to hatch babies. I wasn't really snooping, just trying to recover some missing dishes." —u/WakingOwl1 21."When my oldest daughter moved out, she thought she took her whole knife collection with her. Wrong. We found seven more knives over the course of the next year as we slowly cleaned the room out. Knives that she didn't even remember she had. It wasn't creepy like something was wrong with her, it was just like, 'how in the world do you amass this many collectible knives by the age of 18?'" —u/wimwood 22."At least eight glasses of water, like it was goddamn Signs. Literal piles of trash under her covers that she definitely slept with. Random half-eaten bags of various chocolates…so many. Just gobs of boogers on the headboards. Unopened Capri-Sun pouches that, based on flavor, are artifacts. Clustered used pimple patches on her dresser, in her dresser, on the walls — just so many. This child is an honors student, by the way." —u/donnerpartyintheusa 23."I found a pile of trimmed pubic hair under my high school-aged son's bed. I was just like 'Well, I guess someone's been shaving,' and threw it away in the trash and moved on with my day. Never said anything to him about it." —u/Ordinary_Ice_796 24."A YouTube watch history full of NJM insurance commercials. She's on the spectrum and was obsessed with insurance commercials for a minute." —u/pantsparty1322 25."I found a rolling machine in my teenage son's bedroom. I was horrified. He was only 13. I couldn't find any trace of weed in the machine, and it looked clean. I took a photo and sent it to my husband. He wrote back that it was a magic trick used to make banknotes disappear. LOL." —u/Evieveevee lastly, "I found while cleaning: a Costco-sized bag of grated Parmesan cheese with a spoon in it, sitting next to his bed." —u/donnahotterthnasauna Have you ever found any surprises hiding in your kids' rooms? Let me know in the comments! Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity. Solve the daily Crossword
CBC
13-05-2025
- Health
- CBC
N.W.T.'s medical record system under the microscope after 2 reported cases of snooping
Medical records are among the most sensitive pieces of information that a government agency keeps on citizens. But these records are not impervious to snooping, as evidenced by two distinct cases reported this year by the Northwest Territories Information and Privacy Commissioner. The privacy commissioner issues reports on cases in which an investigation yields evidence of intentional and unauthorized access to private health information, commonly known as "snooping." This year, commissioner Andrew Fox publicly reported two distinct cases of snooping in electronic medical records. They both involved employees of the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority (NTHSSA). Taken together, the cases illustrate vulnerabilities in the NTHSSA's electronic medical record (EMR) system. According to at least one expert, the EMR system doesn't appear to meet the highest ethical standards for patient privacy. An EMR is a digital version of a patient's medical history. It can include things like test results, X-rays and prescriptions. One of the cases published online this year by the privacy commissioner involves an instance in 2021 of an administrative clerk with NTHSSA deliberately opened a person's EMR and relayed some of their private health information to another person. The clerk did this "without consent and without lawful authority," wrote Fox. The clerk admitted to wrongdoing during an NTHSSA investigation, and was fired some months later. Fox called this a "particularly egregious, intentional privacy breach." He said the health authority's response was appropriate, but that the agency should have revoked the employee's EMR access as soon as it confirmed the breach. The health authority uses "role-based access" to the EMR system, meaning an employee's access is limited to what is necessary for their role. Fox noted that on occasions when the clerk was assigned to other roles, the NTHSSA didn't restrict her EMR access in accordance with those roles. 'I felt incredibly violated' The second case published this year involved two NTHSSA employees who, on multiple occasions, snooped in the medical records of a patient who wasn't in their care. The employees were siblings and the patient had previously been in a relationship with one of them. It wasn't until the patient filed a "record of activity" request in July of 2023 — a report on who had looked at her EMR — that she learned of the breach. "I was disgusted. I felt incredibly violated," said Maryse Gravelle, the patient who had her medical records snooped. "Our financial institutions have software in place to identify when there's a fraudulent charge possibly being made on our accounts," she said. "How can a banking institution have those sorts of safeguards in place, but there's no alerts on hospital software, on emergency medical records, to alert when there's a suspicious action in somebody's chart?" In his report, the privacy commissioner said the siblings' jobs granted them "broad access" to the EMR system. Their motivation for opening the patient's records seems to have been "curiosity proceeding from a personal relationship." Fox called the privacy breach a "deliberate and serious breach of trust," and said it caused the patient "significant distress." Both siblings admitted to misconduct, were suspended without pay for 10 days and had their EMR access revoked for at least 18 months. The health authority is required by law to notify a patient about a breach of their medical records "as soon as reasonably possible." In a statement, NTHSSA CEO Kim Riles said the health authority must investigate all reports of privacy breaches, and upon completion of an investigation, notify the affected people. "At times, the investigation process can take a significant amount of time," wrote Riles. She added the NTHSSA is reviewing its practices and "has committed to ensuring the notification occurs as soon as a privacy breach is confirmed, regardless of whether a full investigation has been completed." She said the agency accepted the privacy commissioner's recommendations and continues to improve and update mandatory training. Auditing EMRs 'a real challenge' Livia Kurinska-Hrdlickova is the territory's chief health privacy officer. She said routine audits check for suspicious activity in the EMR system, which if found, is flagged to the health authority. But Fox told CBC that auditing EMRs for instances of unauthorized access is "a real challenge." "If you looked at some random sample of employees looking at health records, there's really nothing that you could infer from the fact that a lab assistant looked at someone's medical record," he said. "You couldn't tell whether that was authorized or not." Neither of the two snooping cases Fox published this year were flagged by a routine audit. Kurinska-Hrdlickova explained that an employee with role-based access to the EMR system has gone through mandatory privacy training, and taken an oath of confidentiality. They need a patient's first and last name, and their date of birth or health-care number, to open their medical record. The system also relies on trust that employees with access will only use the EMR system when it's required for their work on a specific case. "Any system across Canada is not perfect," said Kurinska-Hrdlickova. "You never go to a zero risk, right? Because that's impossible." EMR system not structured 'according to ethics': expert As Fox noted, NTHSSA extended trust to the employees with EMR access, and the employees breached that trust. Eike Kluge, a University of Victoria biomedical ethics professor, said in the case of the siblings, the EMR system shouldn't have allowed them to open Gravelle's record in the first place. "There should be a challenge. Justify who you are and what right you have to access that record," he said. Kluge said the system shouldn't just flag improper access, it should prevent it. If the system isn't blocking improper access, "it's not properly structured," he said. "Certainly not according to ethics." Kurinska-Hrdlickova disagreed with Kluge's assertion and said the territory's EMR system complies with territorial privacy legislation. She also said the territory's EMR system is set to be replaced in the near future, and that the new system will have even stronger privacy protections. There isn't readily available data on the prevalence of medical record snooping in the N.W.T. or in Canada.
