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Google Engineer Spied On Teen Users

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-see-what-you-did-there dept.

bonch writes "Former Google employee David Barksdale accessed user accounts to spy on call logs, chat transcripts, contact lists. As a Site Reliability Engineer, Barksdale had access to the company's most sensitive information and even unblocked himself from a teen's buddy list. He met the minors through a Seattle technology group. Angry parents cut off contact with him and complained to Google, who quietly fired him."

8 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Do No Evil by whisper_jeff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Google's policy may be "Do No Evil" but each individual's policy may differ...

    1. Re:Do No Evil by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And the quietly letting him go rather than warning others about this persons actions is ... whose policy?

    2. Re:Do No Evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Unless he is charged and convicted, let's not hang a man in the realm of public opinion. He was fired, and hopefully he learned something.

  2. Duh by ebonum · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Young single male admins at companies like Google and Yahoo are golden contacts. If you are looking to research something, they can help. For a price.

  3. Come on... by grub · · Score: 5, Funny


    ...the question is: what's his /. ID? It must be in the 4 or 5 figure range.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  4. Cannot really be prevented by gweihir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As anybody with real system administration experience knows, what protects user privacy is that you do not look at their data without explicit permission. That means people with this level of access have to have certain personality traits, and a high level of personal integrity is the most important one. I guess this is just another failed Google hiring process result.

    What now needs to follow is criminal proceedings resulting in a a rather unpleasant punishment. Oh, wait, the US does not have working privacy laws...

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    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  5. ah by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny
    What part of heaven is most popular?

    ...the fucking Cloud.

  6. Re:More than enough reason for no business by arivanov · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It was not Google who caught the guy which is what is worrying in this case, it was the parents of the kids involved.

    I would have expected a shop of their size to have proper security and use at least some of their precious IPR on log analysis.

    --
    Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
    http://www.sigsegv.cx/