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Makes you really wonder if this was an isolated incident or if there are other cases of these tactics that were successful in silencing the victims. Makes me t

Makes you really wonder if this was an isolated incident or if there are other cases of these tactics that were successful in silencing the victims. Makes me think of the series DEVS where a big Silicon Valley company also uses their security force in a similar manner, I never thought that would be the part that was the most accurate. It's scary that this happened at Ebay, I dread to think what kind of shit a company with the funds of google or facebook could pull off.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throw_m239339 5y ago
It's not uncommon for corporations to hire PI and target certain clients/customers/competitors ,for petty reasons or even to dig dirt on them, and it might count as stalking yes. One day when I'm retired I might tell my story. But this case is just one step above all that. Who knows what these employees and executives did to others before, I hardly believe this was an isolated case at eBay.
- dubdigidob 5y ago
  Nobody cares about your story if you’re implying you’re a PI who does this.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    I care, it sounds interesting.
    - dubdigidob 5y ago
      That’s a shame because they’ll never tell their totally real story of being a corporate shill PI until they retire.
      - vorpalhex 5y ago
        Please don't "dunk" on people. You won't get any free internet points for it and it makes the community a worse place.
        _ekzk 5y ago
        Please don’t assume that I care about internet points and make opinionated statements. For all we know we need an internal resistance that doesn’t propagate the echo. My intentions were to point out the original comments lack of contribution just to imply he has some inside view on the PI industry but can’t speak on it until their eventual retirement. I was opinionated because I think PIs are scum and the throwaway was just roleplaying.
        vorpalhex 5y ago
        > I think PIs are scum > For all we know we need an internal resistance that doesn’t propagate the echo. I think we are better off without your contributions if they amount to blindly insulting people you haven't met.
        _ekzk 5y ago
        PI is an occupation not a people. Good on you ignoring the rest of my valid argument to ad hominem your way into making me a bad guy that should be ostracized.
        klyrs 5y ago
        Please familiarize yourself with the site guidelines. You've broken several in this thread, beginning with the shallow dismissal "nobody cares about your story."
        dubdigidob 5y ago
        I believe I’m only ignoring one guideline but then again I don’t think it matters. Why is everyone more concerned with scolding someone than partaking in discussion? I am under the impression this community might just be too sensitive for me and hasn’t quite matured enough to look beyond face values. The guidelines make that pretty clear. You have also “broken” a guideline by not assuming good faith in my argument assuming I’m here to actually dismiss his story. He already did that by prefacing that he wouldn’t disclose further until they retire. It was pointless drivel that felt like roleplaying because they didn’t contribute any anecdotal evidence to keep the discussion around the use of PIs to harass opponents.
agilob 5y ago
darknet diaries has a few episodes with similar stories. Check this one out https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97/ not about a company targeting people, but similar pathological behaviour
pjc50 5y ago
See the ActiBlizzard fiasco.
bdw5204 5y ago
It wasn't exactly successful in silencing the victim but one of the car companies did this to Ralph Nader when he was investigating their products for Unsafe at Any Speed. I'm honestly surprised that any company would still do this sort of thing to critics after how that turned out back in the 60s. When the harassment of Nader was discovered, it put extra momentum behind the push for car safety legislation that cost the car companies lots of money and saved countless lives. Nader was then able to get lots of additional consumer safety laws passed in the 70s. Maybe they just think themselves so powerful after decades of successfully buying politicians that they think they can now get away with this kind of thing.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  It is a different time. CEO malfeasance was not tolerated nearly as much: when it was clear that he would be caught for paying a bribe to the Honduran President, the Chiquita CEO jumped to his death from his office in a Manhattan skyscraper. Nowadays, what drove Eli Black to his suicide is considered “business as usual” and is no bar to someone being CEO, staying out of jail, or even elected President. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_M._Black#Personal_life_and_death https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_M._Black#Personal_life_a...
  - seph-reed 5y ago
    This is the unfortunate truth. There's not a single aspect of social opinion that can't be turned into a heated flame war, and stoked for what it's worth. Be that external powers getting this country to consume itself, or internal ones avoiding the formation of a coherent mob.
- chaostheory 5y ago
  Monsanto, now part of Bayer, was another company known to engage in unethical tactics against farmers who don't use their products.
  - JohnClark1337 5y ago
    I didn't realize they were a part of Bayer now. I was wondering where they disappeared to.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> I dread to think what kind of shit a company with the funds of google or facebook could pull off Me too. Sometimes I see these ideas in science fiction. I remember one black mirror episode where a tech company knows more about a suspect than the police. It's really unnerving watching them casually reveal all sorts of information, even the authorities seemed surprised. Even worse is thinking about the resources governments have and the numberless ways they can abuse these powers.
- trasz 5y ago
  The difference is that the government can, at least in theory, be expected to be transparent.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    They also have a lot more ways to abuse people if they choose to do so.
    - trasz 5y ago
      This is often said. But… what difference does it make if one gets killed by a hired thug, or the military?
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        There's a heck of a lot more ways the government can make your life miserable before they escalate to force and a great many more of those ways are legally defensible in court. Imagine if the cops had been menacingly tailing these people for an equally BS reason, what would their recourse be?
        trasz 5y ago
        So… you’re asking me what would happen if cops did what private companies are already allowed to do?
taviso 5y ago
I've had to endure dirty tricks, even threats and fabricated accusations from Microsoft. It's not a whole lot of fun. Thankfully no black vans or ominous packages in the mail (yet).
- imagine99 5y ago
  Did (or could) you blog somewhere about any details, how these things happened and how you dealt with these tricks, threats and accusations? I reckon it would be very helpful for others in the industry to learn from your experience and at the very least get an understanding of how these things occur, how the other party operates and how you can deal with such situations in an appropriate and self-preserving manner (we often come up short in this important area, as we focus on the technical side of things). Thanks (also for all the hard work that you do!)
  - oefrha 5y ago
    taviso briefly wrote about it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20171450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20171450. Not sure if there’s a more detailed account elsewhere.
ericbarrett 5y ago
> Makes me think of the series DEVS where a big Silicon Valley company also uses their security force in a similar manner, I never thought that would be the part that was the most accurate. This was my first thought when I read about the eBay accusations last year. That said, I've worked for a broad spectrum of Bay Area companies and I think pretty much everything environmental and atmospheric in DEVS was accurate. It was a better take on tech companies and their personalities than, say, "Silicon Valley," and watching it gave me a lot of uncomfortable deja vu. Highly recommended if you are in tech, ever watch TV, and haven't seen it.
luffapi 5y ago
I’ve heard multiple early Facebook employees brag about stalking users, checking out who is looking at who’s pictures… having a really good laugh about it. I couldn’t believe it but it was absolutely happening at FB in the early days and it didn’t seem isolated at all. I don’t know if it’s still happening but stalking is core DNA for Facebook.
- homelesscoder 5y ago
  No wonder gene was so insistent on denying what his creep surf mafia friends did --- even going as far as to threaten me with murder can't let that sweet insider fb DM access for friends of celebrities doing "investigations" be revealed. right, jack?
- cestith 5y ago
  The whole main application the company is named for was built for stalking so color me unsurprised.
EamonnMR 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disrupted:_My_Misadventure_in_the_Start_Up_Bubble#Attempted_suppression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disrupted:_My_Misadventure_in_...
aeturnum 5y ago
Reminds me of the uber executive who personally dug up information on a customer who reported a sexual assault: https://www.vox.com/2017/6/7/15754316/uber-executive-india-assault-rape-medical-records https://www.vox.com/2017/6/7/15754316/uber-executive-india-a...
HWR_14 5y ago
> It's scary that this happened at Ebay, I dread to think what kind of shit a company with the funds of google or facebook could pull off. Ebay is a ~$46 billion company. Yes, that pales in comparison to Google or FB. However, when it comes to going against a couple, any of those three have in essence infinite resources.
stalkingvictim 5y ago
Quick true account story. I swear to the universe this happened as described below: In the middle of the last decade, I moved from a town to which I had just moved, in order to get away from a stalker. I wound up moving into a celebrity's house: a multi-room unit. I listed a room for rent on craigslist, and was contacted by someone closely connected to this celebrity. That evening, I used FB DM to contact an old far away associate about an unrelated matter. The next day at a local coffee shop, a couple sat next to me and started loudly discussing both this potential rental share from the connected party, as well as the content of that private DM. This was extremely unsettling. If you've never experienced this multiple times, it's difficult to convey how traumatizing this is. I started to question my own sanity/vanity/mental health. "Maybe I'm being self important. Maybe I have an undiagnosed mental illness." This caused me significant life damage, because it was not the first nor second time (nor the last time) that such an unattributed event occurred. I still don't know if this was due to a corrupt FB insider feeding celebrity friends, hacking, shoulder surfing, or what. FB insider is the most logical guess. I sought help from the local tech community. Shortly thereafter, my landlord and his associate wound up threatening me -- seemingly out of context, but in a pre-meditated fashion -- with murder. Then, I was threatened by a friend of this celebrity when he promised to ruin my career if I "talk(ed) about what happened". This was highly traumatizing; I was alone, scared, and silenced. I eventually talked about it on FB. Thereafter, I was retaliated against with threats of violence and defamation from a local gang member. Based on these escalations, it seems exceedingly unlikely that the initial stalking/harassment was due to my imagination running wild. In a seemingly unrelated matter in the same timeframe, I was stalked and targeted by two men, related to my failing startup. This occurred at a large, well-connected public establishment, also using supposedly private data (ostensibly gleaned from email this time, related to contractual matter for new client in the five figure range). There were other incidents of harassment that occurred thereafter, particularly during the last administration. I live in an area with heavily polarized political leanings and entrenched long term racial/cultural tensions. I did contact the police, who were unresponsive. After extensive complaining, I eventually did catch the attention of the FBI, who did offer to help, but it's been a long time and the damage is long since done, with little hope to prove anything. Testimony alone is insufficient to prove a pattern of malicious behavior by others. I've also had traumatizing experiences dealing with attorneys and courtrooms and don't wish to pursue civil action anyway. These incidents occurred in a small, tightly knit community to which I was a total outsider transplant.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

throw_m239339 5y ago

It's not uncommon for corporations to hire PI and target certain clients/customers/competitors ,for petty reasons or even to dig dirt on them, and it might count as stalking yes. One day when I'm retired I might tell my story. But this case is just one step above all that. Who knows what these employees and executives did to others before, I hardly believe this was an isolated case at eBay.

dubdigidob 5y ago
Nobody cares about your story if you’re implying you’re a PI who does this.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  I care, it sounds interesting.
  - dubdigidob 5y ago
    That’s a shame because they’ll never tell their totally real story of being a corporate shill PI until they retire.
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      Please don't "dunk" on people. You won't get any free internet points for it and it makes the community a worse place.
      - _ekzk 5y ago
        Please don’t assume that I care about internet points and make opinionated statements. For all we know we need an internal resistance that doesn’t propagate the echo. My intentions were to point out the original comments lack of contribution just to imply he has some inside view on the PI industry but can’t speak on it until their eventual retirement. I was opinionated because I think PIs are scum and the throwaway was just roleplaying.
        vorpalhex 5y ago
        > I think PIs are scum > For all we know we need an internal resistance that doesn’t propagate the echo. I think we are better off without your contributions if they amount to blindly insulting people you haven't met.
        _ekzk 5y ago
        PI is an occupation not a people. Good on you ignoring the rest of my valid argument to ad hominem your way into making me a bad guy that should be ostracized.
        klyrs 5y ago
        Please familiarize yourself with the site guidelines. You've broken several in this thread, beginning with the shallow dismissal "nobody cares about your story."
        dubdigidob 5y ago
        I believe I’m only ignoring one guideline but then again I don’t think it matters. Why is everyone more concerned with scolding someone than partaking in discussion? I am under the impression this community might just be too sensitive for me and hasn’t quite matured enough to look beyond face values. The guidelines make that pretty clear. You have also “broken” a guideline by not assuming good faith in my argument assuming I’m here to actually dismiss his story. He already did that by prefacing that he wouldn’t disclose further until they retire. It was pointless drivel that felt like roleplaying because they didn’t contribute any anecdotal evidence to keep the discussion around the use of PIs to harass opponents.

agilob 5y ago

darknet diaries has a few episodes with similar stories. Check this one out https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97/ not about a company targeting people, but similar pathological behaviour

pjc50 5y ago

See the ActiBlizzard fiasco.

bdw5204 5y ago

It wasn't exactly successful in silencing the victim but one of the car companies did this to Ralph Nader when he was investigating their products for Unsafe at Any Speed. I'm honestly surprised that any company would still do this sort of thing to critics after how that turned out back in the 60s. When the harassment of Nader was discovered, it put extra momentum behind the push for car safety legislation that cost the car companies lots of money and saved countless lives. Nader was then able to get lots of additional consumer safety laws passed in the 70s. Maybe they just think themselves so powerful after decades of successfully buying politicians that they think they can now get away with this kind of thing.

spoonjim 5y ago
It is a different time. CEO malfeasance was not tolerated nearly as much: when it was clear that he would be caught for paying a bribe to the Honduran President, the Chiquita CEO jumped to his death from his office in a Manhattan skyscraper. Nowadays, what drove Eli Black to his suicide is considered “business as usual” and is no bar to someone being CEO, staying out of jail, or even elected President. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_M._Black#Personal_life_and_death https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_M._Black#Personal_life_a...
- seph-reed 5y ago
  This is the unfortunate truth. There's not a single aspect of social opinion that can't be turned into a heated flame war, and stoked for what it's worth. Be that external powers getting this country to consume itself, or internal ones avoiding the formation of a coherent mob.
chaostheory 5y ago
Monsanto, now part of Bayer, was another company known to engage in unethical tactics against farmers who don't use their products.
- JohnClark1337 5y ago
  I didn't realize they were a part of Bayer now. I was wondering where they disappeared to.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> I dread to think what kind of shit a company with the funds of google or facebook could pull off Me too. Sometimes I see these ideas in science fiction. I remember one black mirror episode where a tech company knows more about a suspect than the police. It's really unnerving watching them casually reveal all sorts of information, even the authorities seemed surprised. Even worse is thinking about the resources governments have and the numberless ways they can abuse these powers.

trasz 5y ago
The difference is that the government can, at least in theory, be expected to be transparent.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  They also have a lot more ways to abuse people if they choose to do so.
  - trasz 5y ago
    This is often said. But… what difference does it make if one gets killed by a hired thug, or the military?
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      There's a heck of a lot more ways the government can make your life miserable before they escalate to force and a great many more of those ways are legally defensible in court. Imagine if the cops had been menacingly tailing these people for an equally BS reason, what would their recourse be?
      - trasz 5y ago
        So… you’re asking me what would happen if cops did what private companies are already allowed to do?

taviso 5y ago

I've had to endure dirty tricks, even threats and fabricated accusations from Microsoft. It's not a whole lot of fun. Thankfully no black vans or ominous packages in the mail (yet).

imagine99 5y ago
Did (or could) you blog somewhere about any details, how these things happened and how you dealt with these tricks, threats and accusations? I reckon it would be very helpful for others in the industry to learn from your experience and at the very least get an understanding of how these things occur, how the other party operates and how you can deal with such situations in an appropriate and self-preserving manner (we often come up short in this important area, as we focus on the technical side of things). Thanks (also for all the hard work that you do!)
- oefrha 5y ago
  taviso briefly wrote about it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20171450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20171450. Not sure if there’s a more detailed account elsewhere.

ericbarrett 5y ago

> Makes me think of the series DEVS where a big Silicon Valley company also uses their security force in a similar manner, I never thought that would be the part that was the most accurate. This was my first thought when I read about the eBay accusations last year. That said, I've worked for a broad spectrum of Bay Area companies and I think pretty much everything environmental and atmospheric in DEVS was accurate. It was a better take on tech companies and their personalities than, say, "Silicon Valley," and watching it gave me a lot of uncomfortable deja vu. Highly recommended if you are in tech, ever watch TV, and haven't seen it.

luffapi 5y ago

I’ve heard multiple early Facebook employees brag about stalking users, checking out who is looking at who’s pictures… having a really good laugh about it. I couldn’t believe it but it was absolutely happening at FB in the early days and it didn’t seem isolated at all. I don’t know if it’s still happening but stalking is core DNA for Facebook.

homelesscoder 5y ago
No wonder gene was so insistent on denying what his creep surf mafia friends did --- even going as far as to threaten me with murder can't let that sweet insider fb DM access for friends of celebrities doing "investigations" be revealed. right, jack?
cestith 5y ago
The whole main application the company is named for was built for stalking so color me unsurprised.

EamonnMR 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disrupted:_My_Misadventure_in_the_Start_Up_Bubble#Attempted_suppression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disrupted:_My_Misadventure_in_...

aeturnum 5y ago

Reminds me of the uber executive who personally dug up information on a customer who reported a sexual assault: https://www.vox.com/2017/6/7/15754316/uber-executive-india-assault-rape-medical-records https://www.vox.com/2017/6/7/15754316/uber-executive-india-a...

HWR_14 5y ago

> It's scary that this happened at Ebay, I dread to think what kind of shit a company with the funds of google or facebook could pull off. Ebay is a ~$46 billion company. Yes, that pales in comparison to Google or FB. However, when it comes to going against a couple, any of those three have in essence infinite resources.

stalkingvictim 5y ago

Quick true account story. I swear to the universe this happened as described below: In the middle of the last decade, I moved from a town to which I had just moved, in order to get away from a stalker. I wound up moving into a celebrity's house: a multi-room unit. I listed a room for rent on craigslist, and was contacted by someone closely connected to this celebrity. That evening, I used FB DM to contact an old far away associate about an unrelated matter. The next day at a local coffee shop, a couple sat next to me and started loudly discussing both this potential rental share from the connected party, as well as the content of that private DM. This was extremely unsettling. If you've never experienced this multiple times, it's difficult to convey how traumatizing this is. I started to question my own sanity/vanity/mental health. "Maybe I'm being self important. Maybe I have an undiagnosed mental illness." This caused me significant life damage, because it was not the first nor second time (nor the last time) that such an unattributed event occurred. I still don't know if this was due to a corrupt FB insider feeding celebrity friends, hacking, shoulder surfing, or what. FB insider is the most logical guess. I sought help from the local tech community. Shortly thereafter, my landlord and his associate wound up threatening me -- seemingly out of context, but in a pre-meditated fashion -- with murder. Then, I was threatened by a friend of this celebrity when he promised to ruin my career if I "talk(ed) about what happened". This was highly traumatizing; I was alone, scared, and silenced. I eventually talked about it on FB. Thereafter, I was retaliated against with threats of violence and defamation from a local gang member. Based on these escalations, it seems exceedingly unlikely that the initial stalking/harassment was due to my imagination running wild. In a seemingly unrelated matter in the same timeframe, I was stalked and targeted by two men, related to my failing startup. This occurred at a large, well-connected public establishment, also using supposedly private data (ostensibly gleaned from email this time, related to contractual matter for new client in the five figure range). There were other incidents of harassment that occurred thereafter, particularly during the last administration. I live in an area with heavily polarized political leanings and entrenched long term racial/cultural tensions. I did contact the police, who were unresponsive. After extensive complaining, I eventually did catch the attention of the FBI, who did offer to help, but it's been a long time and the damage is long since done, with little hope to prove anything. Testimony alone is insufficient to prove a pattern of malicious behavior by others. I've also had traumatizing experiences dealing with attorneys and courtrooms and don't wish to pursue civil action anyway. These incidents occurred in a small, tightly knit community to which I was a total outsider transplant.