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> And at the end of their threat they had a demand: don’t ever talk about your findings publicly. Essentially, if you agree to silence, we won’t pursue legal ac
by SenAnder 3y ago
> And at the end of their threat they had a demand: don’t ever talk about your findings publicly. Essentially, if you agree to silence, we won’t pursue legal action.
Legally, can this cover talking to e.g. state prosecutors and the police as well? Because claiming to be "100% secure", knowing you are not secure, and your users have no protection against spying from you or any minimally competent hacker, is fraud at minimum, but closer to criminal wiretapping, since you're knowingly tricking your users into revealing their secrets on your service, thinking they are "100% secure".
That this ended "amicably" is frankly a miscarriage of justice - the Fizz team should be facing fraud charges.
- SoftTalker 3y agoThey could be legitimately ignorant of their security vulnerabilities. That might go to negligence more than fraud.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SenAnder 3y agoThey could not have been ignorant of storing non-anonymous, plain-text messages. Even if we don't count that as insecure, they can only appeal to ignorance/negligence up until the point the security researchers informed them of their vulnerabilities. After that, that they continued their "100% secure" marketing on one side, while threatening researchers into silence on the other, is plainly malicious.
- manicennui 3y agoI don't think the demands of Fizz have much legal standing. We care more about corporations than citizens in the US. Advertising in the US is full of false claims. We ignore this because we pretend like words have no meaning.
- sleepybrett 3y agothere is a carve out in the law for 'puffery', ie exaggerations. So 'the best hamburger in town' would be puffery.
- manicennui 3y agoIn the US?
- esprehn 3y agoYup. https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/puffery-laws.html https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/puffery-laws.... If a reasonable person would understand the claim to be exaggeration (ex. World's best coffee) the law doesn't consider it false advertising.