Focus Group Invite

Hey, all. Maybe I’m being over cautious, but is anyone familiar with myapnea.org being associated with any focus groups? I received an invitation to one but need to “download or click the securedoc.html attachment” in order to read it. I generally don’t like to click on unexpected links with names I’ve not heard of so figured I’d ask. Thanks!

Yes, I also received one as well. I haven't opened the attachment either.

Yes, and I did some research. I don't know if they are associated or not, but it appears to be a legitimate request. Disclaimer, you never know!

Rebecca is or was a Technical Research Assistant at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

I did download and open the attachment. It's a form requesting your name and e-mail to be sent to Rebecca at a Harvard.edu e-mail address. I'm not joining the group.

Interesting.... Rebecca is currently recruiting for a NIH study "Adapting Sleep and Yoga Interventions for Maximal Effectiveness in Low Income Populations (CALYPSO)" https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03392194 This is definitely legitimate.

It's always good to be cautious, Orvwik! And thanks for the additional information, Tonawanda. Rebecca is indeed a research assistant at Brigham and Women's Hospital. I am part of the same research group and we are in the midst of a MyApnea project that includes focus groups. Any emails from us should come from either @partners.org, @bwh.harvard.edu, or @myapnea.org email addresses.

I pinged Rebecca to visit this thread when she is in the office next, which I think will be Wednesday. My guess is that the email comes through in that fashion due to our hospital's email settings. This is useful for us to know - we can look into how to make our invitations a little less suspicious looking in the future!

Hey Everyone,

Thank you for reaching out. We send encrypted emails about research studies through our research organization "Partners Healthcare", which unfortunately requires you to jump through a few hoops. It requires you to initially set up and activate an account with a password. You can then use the password to access secure emails sent to you from Partners HealthCare. If you prefer, we can send you an “unencrypted” email that is not secure and could result in the unauthorized use or disclosure of your information. If you want to receive communications by unencrypted email despite these risks, Partners HealthCare will not be held responsible. I emailed you because you were randomly selected from the 12,000 MyApnea.Org users for a small research study where we are doing online focus groups to discuss the website this Sunday or Tuesday. Respond to my email if you want me to send you the info by unencrypted email!

To reiterate what Mike said, a good rule of thumb to make sure emails from us are not SPAM, is to look for emails ending in: @partners.org, @bwh.harvard.edu, or @myapnea.org email addresses.

Thank you all for your vigilance. Keep in touch!

-Rebecca

I am attempting to respond to this and experiencing great difficulty. After I was finally able to register and set up a password, when I enter the password in the field and hit submit, it says it was not able to send to the address. Thoughts about this? Thank you-