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Glassdoor Exposes 600,000 Email Addresses (siliconbeat.com)
A web site where users anonymously review their employer has exposed the e-mail addresses -- and in some cases the names -- of hundreds of thousands of users. An anonymous reader quotes an article from Silicon Beat:
On Friday, the company sent out an email announcing that it had changed its terms of service. Instead of blindly copying email recipients on the message, the company pasted their addresses in the clear. Each message recipient was able to see the email addresses of 999 other Glassdoor users...
Ultimately, the messages exposed the addresses of more than 2 percent of the company's users... Last month, the company said it had some 30 million monthly active users, meaning that more than 600,000 were affected by the exposure... Although the company didn't directly disclose the names of its users, many of their names could be intuited from their email addresses. Some appeared to be in the format of "first name.last name" or "first initial plus last name."
A Glassdoor spokesperson said "We are extremely sorry for this error. We take the privacy of our users very seriously and we know this is not what is expected of us. It certainly isn't how we intend to operate."
Ultimately, the messages exposed the addresses of more than 2 percent of the company's users... Last month, the company said it had some 30 million monthly active users, meaning that more than 600,000 were affected by the exposure... Although the company didn't directly disclose the names of its users, many of their names could be intuited from their email addresses. Some appeared to be in the format of "first name.last name" or "first initial plus last name."
A Glassdoor spokesperson said "We are extremely sorry for this error. We take the privacy of our users very seriously and we know this is not what is expected of us. It certainly isn't how we intend to operate."
They have a glass door policy there.
We take the privacy of our users very seriously
Every time. Every time there's some major leak of personal info, emails or credit cards or medical records, we hear the same refrain. "We take the privacy of our users seriously".
Uhmm... no, clearly you do not. If you did, then you would not have exposed their email addresses in this manner. This is the opposite of "taking privacy seriously".
Stop saying this, companies. It does not make it better. What makes it better is to demonstrate through actions and policies that you actually do take privacy seriously. There are ways to do this. Not perfect ways, but very good ways. Follow them. Then, and only then can you say this and then look yourself in the mirror with a clear conscience.
Such a mistake was presumably not intentional, but with actual good security practices, this would not have been possible without considerable effort to circumvent the security practices in place. Put them in place. THEN come tell us you "take privacy seriously". We don't care about the words. We care about the actions.
You shouldn't try to talk shit about anyone behind their back. Anonymous rating/review sites are ripe for abuse and slander, and the info should be taken with a grain of salt, if not ignored altogether.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
....the execs of Glassdoor see this and hop onto the escape jet to an undisclosed tropical island
Emails addresses were exposed, that is bad news for sure. However it does not look like you can actually accurately tie the email address with reviews.
For this egregious error will have no lasting consequences applied to them.
Don't get me wrong. The low cost Indian PR firm or intern that was hired to deal with this issue will be fired. but the CEO who brought down the cost cutting measures that ment they had to hire the cut rate Indian firm/interns will simply get a rise.
Noting to see here please move along.
If they wanted to suggest some kind of privacy to the their users they would have called their site opaque door or at least frosted glass door.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
That just might be the case. Most of the names might be burner accounts. Or do I have too much faith in people?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This happens all the time. It's generally done by some dead-end user that CC's instead of BCC's a group of people he knows the latest greatest cat video, or even better, a forward this email and receive $$ (or save the children) email. Even more funny is when this is caused by malware installed by some executable executed by said user that is repetitively spewing out garbage email to everyone on the address list or even worse is used on a botnet.
The only reason this is brought to light is the said dead-end users calls you about why his computer is so slow he can't watch cat videos because he's got so many pop-ups.
Just goes to show, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
It's called Navel Gazing, not Navy Gazing.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Glassdoor deserves to go bankrupt and shut down over this. They have spectacularly failed in the one thing they should have done: keeping the identity of their posters secret.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
That just might be the case. Most of the names might be burner accounts. Or do I have too much faith in people?
You do.
A large amount of people are both lazy and ignorant. Which is probably why they posted at glassdoor in the first place, after being passed for promotions or bonuses, or being replaced by a very small shell script.
Chances are that a great many of these people not only used their real name in their e-mail, but posted from company computers, with the access and data logged. And the only reason they haven't been fired already is that IT doesn't have capacity to wade through all the crap that management told them to log.
Heck, anyone thinking that a site like glassdoor is going to make any positive difference is delusional. At best, it serves as a place to vent.
Democrats have the worse luck with email. Time to switch to smoke signals perhaps?
Table-ized A.I.
No you don't you stupid assholes. Because you just showed how frivolously you take their privacy by telling the world who they are, in as mindlessly careless a way as can be imagined.
May all of your employees find new jobs, and may you go out of business in as humiliating a way as possible.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"Number," not "amount." "People" is a countable noun.
Is there a term for people trying to be pedants, but not being pedantic enough?
in short, you're wrong. While "people" is sometimes used as a substitute for "persons", that does not transform it into a countable. In its singular form, it is still a group noun, like "money" or "slime".
There is indeed an error in the sentence you criticized, but it's with using "are" instead of "is", and not using "amount" instead of "number".
I have witnessed this sort of thing happen either at an employer or at a client business, it occurred shortly after the hiring of a bubbly new young marketing coordinator.
I was one of the people 'exposed', it was sent directly 'To:' myself and a large number (guessing 998) other addresses. Immediately realized this could expose people..gah..
Nope. Those are mass nouns. Perhaps you meant collective nouns? Not that either. A collective noun is like a platoon (made of soldiers) or a flock (made of sheep).
Maybe this is why "27 people" makes sense, but "31 money" or "4 slime" don't.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Glass doors in my house have been exposing my bare ass for years.
I've only ever used Glassdoor for companies after I left. At that point I don't give a fuck what my previous employer thinks if I left on bad terms. Most of the names are not burner accounts either, at least from what I can see. I was one of the 600,000 affected by this.
...like the decimal point or in this case, the infamous second letter of the alphabet: B
We'll make great pets
let me break it down like this: an anonymous website where you have to give a valid email address tied to you the person is NOT anonymous.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I still don't understand. By now you should that these "breaches" are an everyday thing. Why would you ever give your real name and/or card?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
There is indeed an error in the sentence you criticized, but it's with using "are" instead of "is", and not using "amount" instead of "number".
Interesting, but you're only half right.
"A large number of people are both lazy and ignorant" is grammatically correct.
"A large amount of people is both lazy and ignorant" is also arguably correct.
But it says a different thing. The first sentence says that there are many people who are, individually, both lazy and ignorant. The phrase "lazy and ignorant" applies to the individuals in the group. The second sentence says that the subject of the sentence, "a large amount of people" considered as a single object, is both lazy and ignorant. The singular verb means that the phrase "lazy and ignorant" applies to the group as whole