Betterhelp is a secure platform and protecting your privacy is very important and a priority. Anything you say to your counselor is protected by strict federal and state laws, including HIPAA. All messages between you and your counselor are protected and encrypted using bank-grade 256-bit encryption. Therapists must practice under a set of ethical principles.
Different therapy licensing boards have different ethics, however, all therapists must maintain the confidentiality of their patients. When it comes to confidentiality, there is no gray area, a therapy session between a therapist and a patient should be kept confidential.
Betterhelp told
NPR that it is committed to privacy and security. A spokesperson said that the company has created cutting-edge technologies, operations and infrastructure to safeguard the information provided on our platform.Everything BetterHelp members share with their counselor is confidential, secure and encrypted. Is there anything else we're worried about? Well yes, there is. BetterHelp states that it collects, uses and stores communications between users and counselors on its platform. They say that they encrypt messages between you and your therapist on the platform, which is good.
We have not been able to confirm if BetterHelp has a system for managing security vulnerabilities in its application, which shows us its general security practices. We've sent an email to the privacy contact listed on the list to ask you some questions about BetterHelp's privacy practices, and we haven't received a response to our questions, so we're not sure that users can expect a timely response from that contact on the list. The non-profit Mozilla Foundation has also expressed concern about the privacy policies of BetterHelp and Talkspace. While chats almost always don't take place “in real time,” BetterHelp counselors make an extraordinary effort to respond as quickly as possible.
BetterHelp may also collect and process certain categories of personal information, which may be considered “sensitive personal information” in the United Kingdom and the EEA. With hundreds of employees and Teladoc's resources backed up, BetterHelp has been able to focus on making its platform the best in all areas. BetterHelp also uses the word “may” a lot in its brief privacy policy, which, as someone who reads the privacy policies can tell you, usually means that they want to have a lot of leeway in how they use your personal information. Download the app, complete the intake questionnaire, pay and voila, BetterHelp says they'll connect you with the therapist that's right for you.
Betterhelp does not share private information with any advertising platform, such as member names, email addresses, phone numbers, diagnoses, session data, journal entries, messages, worksheets or any other type of communication you have with your therapist. BetterHelp collects, uses and stores communications between users and counselors on the Platform, and communications between users and the BetterHelp customer service team. It is believed that most of BetterHelp's customers are satisfied with the people that the algorithm has matched them with. Text-based therapy and mental health apps, such as Talkspace, MindDoc and (perhaps the best-known) BetterHelp, offer significant benefits.