Slashdot Mirror
Fake E-Mail Results in Angry Apple Shareholders
drhamad writes "Apple stock dropped 2.2% today in mid-afternoon trading as Engadget published news based on a faked e-mail inside Apple. 'Apparently an internal memo was sent to several Apple employees--and forwarded to Engadget--around 9am CT today saying that Apple issued a press release with the news that the iPhone was now scheduled for October, and Leopard was delayed until January. About an hour and a half after that e-mail went out, a second e-mail was sent--this time officially from Apple--saying the first e-mail was a fake, and that the delivery schedule for the iPhone and Leopard had not changed.'"
Wheeee, fun time trading for somebody today.
...is the fact that this hasn't happened more often.
When something like this happens where a direct financial impact can be measured, do any of the rules change regarding the protections that the reporting website operate under?
If the New York Times reports that Microsoft was filing bankruptcy and the stock plummeted, The NYT would be held to some sort of standard. Sometimes a retraction isn't enough, for instance, to protect from a lawsuit.
Now when it's a website, do any of the protections exist, and what are the implications for these guys in terms of liability?
Looks like they are flushing out folks who forward internal emails. Send to a few people and see if the fake news gets out. Binary search in action!
Actually, who else thinks this was a ploy to find out who's leaking internal information? Narrow it down to a suspect, add in some known faithful employees, and send the "fake" press release.
Engadget gets it... internal leak... plugged?
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
Maybe it's time Apple re-thinks their super-secret policies.
Get serious.
Shortly after I went to work there, a colleague explained to me exactly what that secrecy is worth in monetary terms. Apple got the iMac G4 on the cover of Time magazine. You can't buy Time's cover as an ad placement, but if you could it would probably be worth a tens of millions of dollars.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
As a former Apple employee, I can tell you without a doubt that they don't distribute this type of information in memos. The grunts like us are not privy to release dates for anything except pretty much our own assigned products. The only people who are at any point aware of big-picture information like this are the suits, and I doubt any of them would leak (especially considering you can count them on two hands).
Like the iPhone, Apple employees rely on the same sources regular joes do to find out about new releases. Nobody besides the iPhone team even knew what an iPhone looked like before it was shown at MacWorld.