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"What's to stop you from making use of that data?" The vision of Ackwire is to make startup compensation data transparent to prospective employees and employer

"What's to stop you from making use of that data?" The vision of Ackwire is to make startup compensation data transparent to prospective employees and employers. Email addresses are encrypted and stored in a different database. It's true that they aren't hard to manually access, but this presents a reasonable barrier. The same argument applies to any web service that stores personal information. I'm sure there are administrators at Facebook, Gmail, etc. who could read all your private messages, view your photos, etc. But we assume they don't, and most of us use these services anyway. "A lot of this is actionable data. If the startup has IPOed, you might even fall under insider trading regulations and need to make sure you don't trade on it." I'm not a securities lawyer, but this doesn't seem to pass the material non-public test. Significant shareholders in a public company already have to disclose their holdings, publicly. "Finally, there is, of course, the possible issue that someone might offer you a tidy sum of money to buy that data off you, once there's enough of it." I think this is jumping the gun a bit, but any buyer would have to keep the current user agreement intact (posts are confidential and anonymous) or explicitly ask users to opt into the new terms.

roel_v 16y ago
I think the point of the OP was that there is no mechanism in place to enforce your promises. It basically asks people to just trust some guy on the internet that they've never seen or met and most likely never will, and who may or may not be who he says he is. I don't have an answer, I just think it's a valid concern and if your only response is 'oh but I won't do that', well to me that shows that you don't understand the actual concern.
- rdl 16y ago
  If the operator of Ackwire used this data in sufficiently malicious ways, I think there would be potential civil liability (at least enough to bring a credible suit; maybe not to win). I wouldn't trust a random person with this data, but I'd trust a member of a somewhat-meritocratic community like hackernews or quora, university alumni association, etc. It's fairly clear why this data is being collected, what is being done with it, and my potential downside risk is fairly capped. At some point, being overly paranoid is too much of a cost. Yes, a technical solution to this class of problem would be preferable to social trust. (and is one of the things I'm working on, actually...)
  - swombat 16y ago
    I think you're not being paranoid enough. The "HN member" in question has a karma of 18 (yes, karma does count), and I don't recognise his username. The questions you need to ask yourself is: 1) is there any potential downside whatsoever to submitting my data here? If this data is on the front page of the new york times tomorrow, and everyone I know knows it, do I stand to lose anything because of it? 2) is there any real upside to submitting my data here? (seeing other people's data has obvious upsides) Unless 2 is clearly bigger than 1, submitting your salary info here is an irrational decision.
    - rdl 16y ago
      Actually, I mixed up the submitter and the creator (892 vs. 18); I agree I'd trust someone I recognized as a member of the community more than others, but I still think hn-member alone is worth something. So, I don't disagree with you.

roel_v 16y ago

I think the point of the OP was that there is no mechanism in place to enforce your promises. It basically asks people to just trust some guy on the internet that they've never seen or met and most likely never will, and who may or may not be who he says he is. I don't have an answer, I just think it's a valid concern and if your only response is 'oh but I won't do that', well to me that shows that you don't understand the actual concern.

rdl 16y ago
If the operator of Ackwire used this data in sufficiently malicious ways, I think there would be potential civil liability (at least enough to bring a credible suit; maybe not to win). I wouldn't trust a random person with this data, but I'd trust a member of a somewhat-meritocratic community like hackernews or quora, university alumni association, etc. It's fairly clear why this data is being collected, what is being done with it, and my potential downside risk is fairly capped. At some point, being overly paranoid is too much of a cost. Yes, a technical solution to this class of problem would be preferable to social trust. (and is one of the things I'm working on, actually...)
- swombat 16y ago
  I think you're not being paranoid enough. The "HN member" in question has a karma of 18 (yes, karma does count), and I don't recognise his username. The questions you need to ask yourself is: 1) is there any potential downside whatsoever to submitting my data here? If this data is on the front page of the new york times tomorrow, and everyone I know knows it, do I stand to lose anything because of it? 2) is there any real upside to submitting my data here? (seeing other people's data has obvious upsides) Unless 2 is clearly bigger than 1, submitting your salary info here is an irrational decision.
  - rdl 16y ago
    Actually, I mixed up the submitter and the creator (892 vs. 18); I agree I'd trust someone I recognized as a member of the community more than others, but I still think hn-member alone is worth something. So, I don't disagree with you.