Fascinating, Nancy. And yikes. Thanks for sharing that.

The incident, though, has raised a new concern for workers: just how much privacy do you have in the workplace?

[P]atient and work force experts say the gaffe could have a lasting impact on how comfortable—or discomfited—Americans feel about bosses’ data-mining their personal lives. […]

“This example shows how easy it is for employers to find out if employees have a rare medical condition,” said Dr. Deborah C. Peel, founder of Patient Privacy Rights, a nonprofit group in Austin, Tex. She urged regulators to investigate Mr. Armstrong’s disclosure about the babies, saying “he completely outed these two families.”

In response to a query about how Mr. Armstrong learned the specifics of the AOL employees’ situations, Doug Serton, a spokesman for AOL, said, “We aren’t commenting on these issues.”

In other words, suck it.