I had a family member who was in an abusive facility for disabled people (#OurHomesNotNursingHomes).
Before they became disabled, my family member worked for a large nonprofit investigating disabled and elderly abuse, so not only did they know the correct procedures for reporting it, they personally knew a lot of the people working in the government offices meant to oversee and prevent such abuse.
Document everything, report to management and corporate at the facility, move on to local ombudsperson, move on to State Department on Aging.
But reporting did nothing; people didn’t want to get involved and rock the boat I guess.
In order to move my family member out, the facility made us sign a waiver barring us from ever publicly talking about it or the parent company that owns it. A gag order.
My family member is still friends with people in the facility and we know that the abuse has only gotten worse with the pandemic, because residents are more isolated.
I was wondering if using a VPN and location changer would allow me to leave online reviews of the facility warning people about it.
I have accepted that I can’t save the people already there, but maybe I can prevent others from ever moving in.
Thank you.
Not unless your account has your real name. A location changer is not really necessary if you’re using a VPN, since a VPN is essentially a location changer but better.
If you’re leaving a review on a public site like Yelp, then the only thing the VPN will do is change the location the review was posted from if that’s even something they show.
If you’re leaving a review on their website, then yeah they’d see the information coming from a different IP address sure.
But in either case they’re most likely going to be considering the timing and details of the review itself rather than where it was posted from to determine who made it.
I wouldn’t respect the gag order. If it’s not a court order fuck that company.
It depends on how badly the site would want to track you. There are new techniques that can “fingerprint” your computer’s graphics card and use that to identify you. It has something to do with the data your web browser exposes to the server when it goes to render things on the page.
Have you spoken with a lawyer? Maybe the gag order isn’t actually enforceable. It seems outrageous to me that in order to remove someone from a facility you have to sign away your right to ever talk about the place. That feels incredibly predatory to me.
A VPN changes your IP, thats just one factor that identifies you. If you login, thats another. But there is also browser tracking and a lot of other tools. So my advice is: use another device that you never used and that has no credentials for any of your accounts (like a libary PC)
The VPN would not add any meaningful protection against any potential methods the company could use to identify you. If they have an actual gag order, it’s a risk no matter what.
You can write reviews with VPN.
Another way would be to print a few copies and mail a bunch of the same to the office. Use different post offices and different address.
I think the issue isn’t the place finding out who the review is from but rather there being enough evidence that would hold up in court if they tried to sue over the review.