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This is absolutely disgusting to hear. Can you imagine if Apple or Google employees were caught doing something like this with photos/videos taken with their pr

This is absolutely disgusting to hear. Can you imagine if Apple or Google employees were caught doing something like this with photos/videos taken with their products?

HWR_14 4y ago
Absolutely. Just like Amazon, Facebook, Uber, NSA and other employees have done so as well. The only reason Apple or Google employees might not do that is encryption and decent access controls, not because they are better people. It would not shock me in the least if a Google or Apple employee did something similar. It might shock me a little just because of the risk/reward if they were just snooping on random people. But not if it was exes/crushes/friends/etc.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Apple would be the most shocking, given their ingrained company culture of secrecy and compartmentalization.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    It would be harder for Apple employees to do too. Have you tried the Mail search? I can’t find things that are definitely there.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      That's not unique to Apple. The same is definitely true of GMail.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      > Have you tried the Mail search? I can’t find things that are definitely there. I hate the Mail search, because I know it misses all kinds of things. I have to go open up my gmail account in the web browser to find things that I know exist.
  - aeyes 4y ago
    > Apple has paid a multi-million dollar settlement to a woman whose photos and videos were shared online by technicians repairing her iPhone. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57399627 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57399627
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      That's kinda like saying that Best Buy shared photos and videos from a customer's iPhone. Different from data ingested during normal operation and being processed by the corporation.
- ynx 4y ago
  Facebook has had access auditing tools for at least 15 years at this point, and it only got stricter with time. It was already a fireable offence back then, too, to improperly access someone's data without a business justification. From what I heard they did indeed have some LOVEINT problems before that i.e. an employee couple with a nasty breakup - but they were also orders of magnitude smaller.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > It was already a fireable offence back then, too, to improperly access someone's data without a business justification. Is this supposed to be comforting? "without a business justification" means that if there is business justification (e.g. more revenue) they will violate privacy.
perihelions 4y ago
There was a Google SRE who stalked women through their Google accounts. I wonder if I can find that HN thread... update: Found one of them, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692754 ("Google fired engineer for breaking internal privacy policies" (2010)) It's not linked in there, but the Wired writeup adds that (0) there were at least two SRE's fired for something like this and (1) Google chose not to report this to law enforcement, seemingly prioritizing its public image over its users' safety. https://www.wired.com/2010/09/google-spy/ https://www.wired.com/2010/09/google-spy/ ("Ex-Googler Allegedly Spied on User E-Mails, Chats" (2010))
- wnevets 4y ago
  Do I really need to point out the differences between these two stories or can we agree they're not actually comparable?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
    Well, in my case, I fail to see how these stories are incomparable; they're not identical but they seem, at least, comparable. What makes them so fundamentally different that someone is wrong to share that story as an example of "something like this" story?
    - Corence 4y ago
      Tesla's example is most alarming to me since people who seemingly have no business purpose to access highly sensitive data have access to it. Culturally people feel safe sharing this data on internal chats which means they don't think coworkers will report the data access violations and since the content is spreading "like wildfire" there's a significant number of people at the company who are abusing data access as opposed to an individual abusing their elevated access.
  - popinman322 4y ago
zaroth 4y ago
Have you heard of Ring? Alexa? There are countless stories of the data from these devices being harvested by Amazon, and even sent to law enforcement to use against their owners.

This is absolutely disgusting to hear. Can you imagine if Apple or Google employees were caught doing something like this with photos/videos taken with their products?

HWR_14 4y ago

Absolutely. Just like Amazon, Facebook, Uber, NSA and other employees have done so as well. The only reason Apple or Google employees might not do that is encryption and decent access controls, not because they are better people. It would not shock me in the least if a Google or Apple employee did something similar. It might shock me a little just because of the risk/reward if they were just snooping on random people. But not if it was exes/crushes/friends/etc.

rootusrootus 4y ago
Apple would be the most shocking, given their ingrained company culture of secrecy and compartmentalization.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  It would be harder for Apple employees to do too. Have you tried the Mail search? I can’t find things that are definitely there.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    That's not unique to Apple. The same is definitely true of GMail.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    > Have you tried the Mail search? I can’t find things that are definitely there. I hate the Mail search, because I know it misses all kinds of things. I have to go open up my gmail account in the web browser to find things that I know exist.
- aeyes 4y ago
  > Apple has paid a multi-million dollar settlement to a woman whose photos and videos were shared online by technicians repairing her iPhone. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57399627 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57399627
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    That's kinda like saying that Best Buy shared photos and videos from a customer's iPhone. Different from data ingested during normal operation and being processed by the corporation.
ynx 4y ago
Facebook has had access auditing tools for at least 15 years at this point, and it only got stricter with time. It was already a fireable offence back then, too, to improperly access someone's data without a business justification. From what I heard they did indeed have some LOVEINT problems before that i.e. an employee couple with a nasty breakup - but they were also orders of magnitude smaller.
- jjav 4y ago
  > It was already a fireable offence back then, too, to improperly access someone's data without a business justification. Is this supposed to be comforting? "without a business justification" means that if there is business justification (e.g. more revenue) they will violate privacy.

perihelions 4y ago

There was a Google SRE who stalked women through their Google accounts. I wonder if I can find that HN thread... update: Found one of them, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692754 ("Google fired engineer for breaking internal privacy policies" (2010)) It's not linked in there, but the Wired writeup adds that (0) there were at least two SRE's fired for something like this and (1) Google chose not to report this to law enforcement, seemingly prioritizing its public image over its users' safety. https://www.wired.com/2010/09/google-spy/ https://www.wired.com/2010/09/google-spy/ ("Ex-Googler Allegedly Spied on User E-Mails, Chats" (2010))

wnevets 4y ago
Do I really need to point out the differences between these two stories or can we agree they're not actually comparable?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
  Well, in my case, I fail to see how these stories are incomparable; they're not identical but they seem, at least, comparable. What makes them so fundamentally different that someone is wrong to share that story as an example of "something like this" story?
  - Corence 4y ago
    Tesla's example is most alarming to me since people who seemingly have no business purpose to access highly sensitive data have access to it. Culturally people feel safe sharing this data on internal chats which means they don't think coworkers will report the data access violations and since the content is spreading "like wildfire" there's a significant number of people at the company who are abusing data access as opposed to an individual abusing their elevated access.
- popinman322 4y ago

zaroth 4y ago

Have you heard of Ring? Alexa? There are countless stories of the data from these devices being harvested by Amazon, and even sent to law enforcement to use against their owners.