Lieff Cabraser is investigating reports that nonprofit mental-health hotline Crisis Text Line has been improperly sharing acquired user and patient data with its own for-profit spinoff company.

An exposé published recently in Politico raised significant concerns about privacy issues and the ethics of such for-profit patient data sharing, concerns that were heightened here given the high-risk and deeply personal information attached to crisis line messages.

“The problem is that [the] arrangement appears to extract commercial value out of the most sensitive, intimate, and vulnerable moments in the lives of individuals seeking mental health assistance and from the responses of hard-working volunteers.”

CTL has been acquiring sensitive personal data via its support lines for almost ten years. The company is now facing questions from data privacy experts and at least one U.S. senator, as well as from its own volunteers about the sharing of intimate personal data of users with Loris.ai, a company that uses insights gleaned from the text line’s millions of conversations for purposes that include the design of customer service software.

The nonprofit, founded in 2013, has gathered what it has called “the largest mental health data set in the world” as part of its work offering free, text-based crisis response.

If you were or are a Crisis Text Line user and you are concerned that your intimate personal data may have been improperly shared with for-profit intentions, we urge you to contact a data privacy lawyer at Lieff Cabraser today for a free, 100% confidential review of your case.