Unrecorded, face-to-face psychotherapy offers a fairly secure environment for discussing sensitive personal issues. And there was a time when utilizing insurance coverage had little or no impact on a client's privacy. But not today. Today, managed care policies typically require therapists to submit regular reports that include sensitive personal information.
The insurance administrators who review your case are free to request additional information... ostensibly to determine if your treatment is "medically necessary" and appropriate for your problem. From that point on, God only knows what data-base your private information will find its way into.
Given today's realities, your personal information may be more secure in e-therapy. Since insurance typically does not finance e-therapy, it's irrelevant to your online privacy. E-therapy, however, has its own source of privacy concerns. Are you sure you're emailing a professional, someone who will respect your personal information and keep it private? Are your transmissions sufficiently secure? Just as phone conversations can be tapped, email can be filtered for key words. Perhaps neither event is very likely, but they are possible. Particularly if you are emailing via an intranet at work: a situation I strongly recommend you avoid because of the frequent email monitoring in that environment. If you are using your home computer and a private access account, there is little chance that your email will be intercepted. In fact, there are a number of strategies, such as encryption, that almost guarantee the confidentiality of email in transit. Your greatest "security risk" is most likely to arise from the record you keep of your email. Anyone who has access to your computer could potentially read any information you keep there, including your email.