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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those cases where I probably should feel bad for the company being repeatedly hacked to the point of being ripe for being shut down, but I just can't muster the will right now.

If you are in the business of collecting data without users' explicit permission, and can't protect that data from being accessed or deleted, you shoudln't be in business.

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I wish they had done one more thing: notified everyone on whose devices this software was installed. If someone put this on my phone without my knowledge, I would want to know. (I would also almost certainly sue.)

Yes. I want to see that happen also. But I want to separate the part of me who wants to see fireworks from the "right thing to do" I think we need to think through the technicalities of notifying the hacked people, would they even know what to do with your email? Would they consider it spam or phishing and just delete it l? Assuming you're successful, what societal fallout could result? I don't know the answers to these questions. Ultimately it's similar to emailing the partners of the users of Ashley Madison and sending the user profiles to them. What's the intended outcome?

> What's the intended outcome?

Punitive action against the company who collected the data and lost control of it.

Punitive penalties are typically just a monetary fine above and beyond damages, but exposing just how badly they screwed up to the public at large should provide a good financial penalty in addition to doing a public good (a reminder of how much "private" data is not actually private).

The definition of "your phone" is what comes into play here. If the parent or abusive spouse pays for the phone, it's not "your phone", it's theirs, and can put what they want on it.

I feel like this is a better way of putting it:

"If you are in the business of collecting data without users' explicit permission you shoudln't be in business."

Half of the internet economy would probably disappear... for the better.

> If you are in the business of collecting data without users' explicit permission, or a warrant from a court, you shouldn't be in business.

Fixed that for you

But where would all the mathematicians go?

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