6 ms·

> Why aren’t we sending an email to every user? > We evaluated the risk and consulted with our privacy lawyers and legal experts, and took the approach that we

> Why aren’t we sending an email to every user? > We evaluated the risk and consulted with our privacy lawyers and legal experts, and took the approach that we thought appropriately mitigated any issues while being open and transparent and did not believe emailing directly was helpful in this case. Seems like a pretty weak justification. "Our lawyers said we don't have to notify users."

dangerface 5y ago
Normally you would email users notifying them of a hack so they can change passwords since there was no password breach it doesn't make a lot of sense to email people, theres nothing for them to do.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  If you are a customer who might start receiving death threats in the mail because someone leaked your email address and home address at the same time, there might be things that they need to do.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
devwastaken 5y ago
Yep. Lawyers will always take the road of least liability. I have no doubt the lawyer said to not even write about it publicly. I stopped trusting adafruit when they sent me broken boards and never replaced them. Their software side is very startupy, they love to break things, especially if it was working perfectly fine before. I have a USB to uart/SPI/i2c adafruit device that won't operate in any of those modes without changing windows drivers between them, and ontop of it requires local side circuit python and it used to just be C. Circuit python was a huge mistake on their part. They didn't have the people to do C correctly (look at their nrf libraries), much less C and circuit python versions. Which ends up being a compatability nightmare. So I just buy a 5 pack of esp32's or other dev boards off Amazon and be done with it. If they're broke, I get them for free. Sad to see that Amazon breaks less consumer laws than Adafruit in this case.
- gompertz 5y ago
  The USB to uart/i2c/spi issue is due to them using counterfeit chips. https://hackaday.com/2016/02/01/ftdi-drivers-break-fake-chips-again/ https://hackaday.com/2016/02/01/ftdi-drivers-break-fake-chip...
  - fpgaminer 5y ago
    > No surprise really since most adafruit stuff is rebranded Ali express merchandise. I don't know that I've ever seen rebranded Aliexpress merch on Adafruit. Boards and such are primarily their own design. Proof being ... it's all open source and the design files are on Github. There's occasionally other vendor's products there, like Pimoroni. Again, not rebranded Aliexpress. Besides boards, there's tools and such, but those have all been on brand from what I've seen. Adafruit is how I found out about the fantastic Japanese ENGINEER brand. They generally put a lot of effort into combing through suppliers and finding good quality stuff.
    - gompertz 5y ago
      I edited my comment. That's fair comments... I meant more the non-board stuff such as wires/interconnects etc. I actually saw a thread once where people were able to correlate bulk purchases on Alibaba/Ali (since they publish it with redacted usernames) with Adafruit on stock of certain supplies.
      - colejohnson66 5y ago
        It's entirely possible the passive components they sell are repackaged AliExpress stuff. But I'd guess it's because the passives are the same quality a hobbyist would get from buying on Amazon. Their "secret sauce" is the boards and software they design.
  - jrockway 5y ago
    Actually, Aliexpress vendors are rebranding their merchandise. Adafruit publishes the board files, then someone removes their logo and sells it for $1 less on Amazon. If you have any doubt that Adafruit is doing their own designs, Lady Ada often streams herself designing new boards. In general, they have reliable supply chains and manufacture everything in New York City. I have never heard of them selling counterfeit FTDI chips. I have two of their FT232H modules purchased directly through their store and they're legit.
Hamuko 5y ago
I hope that they don't have any EU customers, since leaking a bunch of names, email addresses and shipping addresses sounds pretty serious, to the degree where they might need to alert a bunch of EU member state authorities, and customers.
999900000999 5y ago
They've just ensured they're never going to see a dollar from me. I strongly considered purchasing my Raspberry pis from them, but I was put off by high shipping cost.
- OnionBlender 5y ago
  What's a good alternative in the US? I've been wanting to get into electronics and microcontrollers as a hobby. I have a old Arduino Uno that I got for free from some conference but I have none of the other stuff I would need to actually make something. I thought about getting a Raspberry since I found the Arduino to have very little RAM.
  - 999900000999 5y ago
    I like Sparkfun, fast shipping and all.
  - iudqnolq 5y ago
    I'm in a pretty similar place a few months along (programmer getting into hobby electronics). I mostly buy from DigiKey. They have a very wide selection of professional stuff, and they also resell adadruit and other similar hobby stuff (I think adadruit is a great company that makes great products personally). You're not going to find a raspberry pi anywhere except from a scalper (~2x MSRP) for at least a few months, though. See https://rpilocator.com/?country=US https://rpilocator.com/?country=US . I started off with rpi, but quickly realized I preferred not having a whole OS to manage. All my projects are now using adadruit boards, mostly feather nrf52840 ($20, Bluetooth low energy, great rust or circuitpython support).
- iudqnolq 5y ago
  High shipping cost? They pass along the cost of your choice of USPS, FedEx, UPS. You're not going to find anything better unless you buy on Amazon, which has a much bigger counterfeit problem.
  - Handytinge 5y ago
sriram_sun 5y ago
Did you ask your lawyers, "despite the advice that all users don't have to be notified, what if we did anyway?"
- stingraycharles 5y ago
  Lawyers do not (necessarily) care about that: it just increases risk, they advice against it, and that’s that. Taking this advice, and weighting this against other factors (goodwill with customers, for example) is what a good CEO is able to navigate.

dangerface 5y ago

Normally you would email users notifying them of a hack so they can change passwords since there was no password breach it doesn't make a lot of sense to email people, theres nothing for them to do.

Hamuko 5y ago
If you are a customer who might start receiving death threats in the mail because someone leaked your email address and home address at the same time, there might be things that they need to do.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

devwastaken 5y ago

Yep. Lawyers will always take the road of least liability. I have no doubt the lawyer said to not even write about it publicly. I stopped trusting adafruit when they sent me broken boards and never replaced them. Their software side is very startupy, they love to break things, especially if it was working perfectly fine before. I have a USB to uart/SPI/i2c adafruit device that won't operate in any of those modes without changing windows drivers between them, and ontop of it requires local side circuit python and it used to just be C. Circuit python was a huge mistake on their part. They didn't have the people to do C correctly (look at their nrf libraries), much less C and circuit python versions. Which ends up being a compatability nightmare. So I just buy a 5 pack of esp32's or other dev boards off Amazon and be done with it. If they're broke, I get them for free. Sad to see that Amazon breaks less consumer laws than Adafruit in this case.

gompertz 5y ago
The USB to uart/i2c/spi issue is due to them using counterfeit chips. https://hackaday.com/2016/02/01/ftdi-drivers-break-fake-chips-again/ https://hackaday.com/2016/02/01/ftdi-drivers-break-fake-chip...
- fpgaminer 5y ago
  > No surprise really since most adafruit stuff is rebranded Ali express merchandise. I don't know that I've ever seen rebranded Aliexpress merch on Adafruit. Boards and such are primarily their own design. Proof being ... it's all open source and the design files are on Github. There's occasionally other vendor's products there, like Pimoroni. Again, not rebranded Aliexpress. Besides boards, there's tools and such, but those have all been on brand from what I've seen. Adafruit is how I found out about the fantastic Japanese ENGINEER brand. They generally put a lot of effort into combing through suppliers and finding good quality stuff.
  - gompertz 5y ago
    I edited my comment. That's fair comments... I meant more the non-board stuff such as wires/interconnects etc. I actually saw a thread once where people were able to correlate bulk purchases on Alibaba/Ali (since they publish it with redacted usernames) with Adafruit on stock of certain supplies.
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      It's entirely possible the passive components they sell are repackaged AliExpress stuff. But I'd guess it's because the passives are the same quality a hobbyist would get from buying on Amazon. Their "secret sauce" is the boards and software they design.
- jrockway 5y ago
  Actually, Aliexpress vendors are rebranding their merchandise. Adafruit publishes the board files, then someone removes their logo and sells it for $1 less on Amazon. If you have any doubt that Adafruit is doing their own designs, Lady Ada often streams herself designing new boards. In general, they have reliable supply chains and manufacture everything in New York City. I have never heard of them selling counterfeit FTDI chips. I have two of their FT232H modules purchased directly through their store and they're legit.

Hamuko 5y ago

I hope that they don't have any EU customers, since leaking a bunch of names, email addresses and shipping addresses sounds pretty serious, to the degree where they might need to alert a bunch of EU member state authorities, and customers.

999900000999 5y ago

They've just ensured they're never going to see a dollar from me. I strongly considered purchasing my Raspberry pis from them, but I was put off by high shipping cost.

OnionBlender 5y ago
What's a good alternative in the US? I've been wanting to get into electronics and microcontrollers as a hobby. I have a old Arduino Uno that I got for free from some conference but I have none of the other stuff I would need to actually make something. I thought about getting a Raspberry since I found the Arduino to have very little RAM.
- 999900000999 5y ago
  I like Sparkfun, fast shipping and all.
- iudqnolq 5y ago
  I'm in a pretty similar place a few months along (programmer getting into hobby electronics). I mostly buy from DigiKey. They have a very wide selection of professional stuff, and they also resell adadruit and other similar hobby stuff (I think adadruit is a great company that makes great products personally). You're not going to find a raspberry pi anywhere except from a scalper (~2x MSRP) for at least a few months, though. See https://rpilocator.com/?country=US https://rpilocator.com/?country=US . I started off with rpi, but quickly realized I preferred not having a whole OS to manage. All my projects are now using adadruit boards, mostly feather nrf52840 ($20, Bluetooth low energy, great rust or circuitpython support).
iudqnolq 5y ago
High shipping cost? They pass along the cost of your choice of USPS, FedEx, UPS. You're not going to find anything better unless you buy on Amazon, which has a much bigger counterfeit problem.
- Handytinge 5y ago

sriram_sun 5y ago

Did you ask your lawyers, "despite the advice that all users don't have to be notified, what if we did anyway?"

stingraycharles 5y ago
Lawyers do not (necessarily) care about that: it just increases risk, they advice against it, and that’s that. Taking this advice, and weighting this against other factors (goodwill with customers, for example) is what a good CEO is able to navigate.