
Send me your privacy abuse tipoffs - domrdy
https://robertheaton.com/2020/02/07/send-me-your-privacy-abuse-tipoffs/
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seibelj
Whistleblower payoffs in the US can be up to 30% of collected money
[https://www.sec.gov/whistleblower](https://www.sec.gov/whistleblower)

> _The Commission is authorized by Congress to provide monetary awards to
> eligible individuals who come forward with high-quality original information
> that leads to a Commission enforcement action in which over $1,000,000 in
> sanctions is ordered. The range for awards is between 10% and 30% of the
> money collected._

If the government started paying off employees who report data violations,
there would be a lot of retired engineers on Hacker News!

~~~
HenryBemis
That could create a conflict of interest though. Imagine I'm an engineer that
can profit by adding some malware on a (e.g.) printer. Ka-ching! I add the
malware, count til 10 (weeks), report to regulator, cash out, adios amigos!!!
And then HP (for example) is left with the penalty. Not fair for the company.
This is one of the reasons we need independent reviews & assessment.

Conflict of interest, maker-checker matter in this line of work. A
whistleblower is always a whistleblower, but one can open the gates and then
cry wolf.

~~~
netsharc
Presumably HP could sue the engineer for willful sabotage? Especially if that
engineer whistle-blew the problem that the bug causes (on the code s/he wrote)
instead of submitting a bugfix..

~~~
theptip
I think the plan would be to add the malware in such a way as to not get
caught/attributed, I.e. hack the build server, impersonate another user
account, or similar.

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bitxbitxbitcoin
Robert deserves a huge pat on the back for doing this. I can only imagine how
many tipoffs he will need to sift through and I look forward to seeing the
results. I disagree with his thought that this won't make companies learn to
respect privacy. We're at a cusp and it's actions like this that are the baby
steps that can take us towards a better, privacy respecting future.

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debt
This is actually a huge source of potential litigation. Lawsuits that easily
end in settlement given CCPA, GDPR etc. He’s likely not just doing this for
his blog.

It’s akin to “Injured at work?” billboards.

~~~
Nextgrid
I don’t really mind him profiting off this if it means nasty companies stop
stalking me. As far as I’m concerned it’s a win-win situation.

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techntoke
Website suggestion. Forward slashes indicate breadcrumbs and hierarchy, like a
file system in the terminal. However, you're using them for link separators
all over your website which if very confusing. Traditionally the pipe `|`
symbol or potentially borders would make better separators.

~~~
reaperducer
His web site. His style.

~~~
dredmorbius
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va zrfntvat rsrpgvirarf, naq fubhyq or rapbhentrq.

Yes, it's possible to increase frictions. But mostly, that just reads as
annoying.

As here.

