That's so far outside of what is acceptable that it should be actionable in some way and I sincerely hope Google cuts them off at the knees. Aren't you breaking an NDA by posting this? (If so, extra kudos to you!)
> I haven't been a part of that company for several years now, and did not have any legal agreements or first party relationship with either of the companies named above, and since the deal closed since with Slice it would be difficult for anyone to allege damages.
And if all this disappears, then yes, someone did attack me legally over it. I don't like the business culture that has built up around this kind of thing -- reputation is important, so let's defend it with lots of lawyers and NDAs, but it's too much effort to be up front about business practices that might give us a bad reputation. That's bullshit.
I totally agree. But, and this is a very big but: companies would no longer be open to potential acquisition partners during the due diligence phase of an acquisition if professionals in this space would talk publicly (or even at all) about what they find.
I'm seriously conflicted about this because I too have seen some extremely horrible stuff in the last couple of years, some of which I'm quite sure would rock the world orders of magnitude worse than what unroll.me has been up to and that was secured roughly in the same way (or maybe even worse) and with data best qualified as 'radioactive'. I do sign NDAs and I stick to them religiously but it is very hard at times to do that. Even so I understand that I'd make life miserable for those that employ me if I'd ever break an NDA.
Yep. Working in Systems as I do, my word that I'll keep my employer's secrets is pretty precious. Still, we share war stories over libations with our peers. These stories have value; they're how we know as a community what products to use and what employers to seek or to avoid. While I didn't intend for this to get quite the audience that it's getting, I will own up to having shared the story.
My boundary, and the legal boundary that NDAs (even despite what is written in them) are generally held to is "trade secrets." I would hope that everything in my post is three or more years out of date, and would no longer qualify as such.
We're in immoral waters here:
1) NDA's prevent most human's getting closer to the truth.
2) Selected audiences (the drinking friends you share details with) know that companies x, y and z are scammers and criminal, but most don't.
3) As a consequence companies that are immoral and fronted by the most skilled marketing liars thrive too much.
I say not doing evil to the rest of mankind trumps protecting the evil few.
Leaking systems that work seem like the moral road?
I don't believe in that. For one, there is no such thing as anonymity to begin with, for another, I think if you do a thing like that you should stand by it.
