

Harvard student loses Facebook internship after pointing out privacy flaws - 882542F3884314B
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2015/08/12/harvard-student-loses-facebook-internship-after-pointing-out-privacy-flaws/zASZFdUjn6PoliUiR9kVHJ/story.html?p1=feature_pri_hp

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colanderman
It's hard to get too outraged about this. Imagine you go behind your current
employer's back and release an exploit against one of their own products.
Would you expect them _not_ to fire you on the spot?

The ethical course of action is to first use the internal communication
channels afforded you as an employee to try to remedy the problem from within.
Only if your employer refuses to fix the problem, is it ethical to
whistleblow.

Given that this kid _already had an offer and a start date_ , he was literally
only _days_ away from having access to such communication channels, whereupon
he would have been in a much better position to asses his employer's
willingness to patch the security hole (which it seems they had already
started doing).

Instead he chose to throw egg in his (future) employer's face, and publicize a
tool that could actually endanger people.

I'm not at all denouncing whistleblowing… many whistleblowers are tantamount
to martyrs. But publicly calling out your own employer without having assessed
their awareness of the issue – and expecting them not to fire you – is just
_dumb_.

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animal531
I agree 100%. Nearly any employee/intern at any company would have landed in
the same hot water.

