eBay’s Critics Faced an Extreme Case of an Old Silicon Valley Habit | Hacker News Reader

eBay’s Critics Faced an Extreme Case of an Old Silicon Valley Habit

nytimes.com

78 pointssharemywin37 comments

> She had met a man on Match.com who claimed to work in construction in San Jose, Calif., and he had convinced her to send him a topless photo. He was threatening to email the photo to the entire company if she did not pay him $10,000.

> With her permission, Mr. Sullivan’s team took over her account and redirected her extortionist to a payment scheme that they knew would reveal his identity. They determined he was a former Google intern living in Nigeria.

> Mr. Sullivan’s team hired Nigerian contractors to confront him. He confessed and surrendered access to his computer and online accounts, which showed he was extorting female executives across Silicon Valley. Investigators were able to destroy the nude photos and warned his victims not to pay.

...

> a former Google intern living in Nigeria

> hired Nigerian contractors to confront him

All of this is both insane and fascinating..

> hired Nigerian contractors to confront him

I assume by "contractor", it is not meant that they called up WiPro for someone who can knock out a nice PHP website in a week. OTOH, I wouldn't want to mess with anyone that has to deal with PHP week after week.

I understood "contractor" in this usage to mean mercenary.

It sounds like something out of a Taken movie.

> Mr. Sullivan learned that lesson as a security executive at eBay in 2006. Romanian fraudsters were running rampant on eBay, and Romanian authorities refused to address the problem. It was only after Mr. Sullivan’s team shut off eBay access to all of Romania — with a message blaming eBay’s shuttering on Romanian law enforcement’s refusal to pursue online criminals — that Romanian police took action.

Haha, I remember an article that quoted an anonymous Ebay employee maybe 10 years ago where they said something like « What do they want us to do, go to Romania in our green EBay jumpsuits and confront them? »

But it sounds like tech companies do just that!

Multinational tech companies are now more powerful than many smaller governments. They can, and do, impact who ends up in charge of many such governments, at the end of the day.

10 years ago, no politician would've gotten stressed out over a statement from a tech company executive. Now many are worried about keeping close contact with them.

I wouldn’t be surprised if eFraud wasn’t used as a tactic when Bulgaria and Romania were admitted into the EU. No doubt lots of tech companies did a lot of lobbying for these two to get their act together.

And it's a good thing. It helps keeping bad people on a good behavior.

If you trust politicians less than tech company executives, sure. But tech company executives are by and large pretty shady people.

This Wired article goes into more detail. Stranger than fiction.

https://www.wired.com/story/ebay-employees-charged-cyberstal...

Completely insane behavior. How do you wake up one day at a corporate environment and think any of this is OK?

Bad behavior can slowly creep up on you over time.

Many customers think the « fraud squad » at big companies are there to protect the consumer. They’re not. Just like HR, the team exists to protect the company.

People who think bad behavior is okay tend to cluster together. The people who objected likely were selected out over time, either by leaving for more ethical companies or being pushed out for non-compliance.

Over time, the bad actors would become surrounded by other bad actors. It becomes a bubble, or an echo chamber.

this is true. I used to work for a closeted racist who argued he wasn't a racist because he voted for Obama.

this is true. I used to work for a closeted racist who argued he wasn't a racist because he voted for Obama. But would hire guys he thought he could add to his inner circle. He loved to point out examples that "proved" his theory that stereotypes were truthful, and he only did this when he thought he had the "right" audience. Real manipulative fscker.

>tend to cluster together.

Yeah that is seems to happen informally too. Often I don't think it even requires people being pushed out or even knowing what everyone's views on things are, it just happens.

I worked with a guy who had some interesting views, I suspected he was a casual sort of racist (turned out to be way more than that) but obviously I wasn't going to probe this guy's opinions and I avoided him beyond work related topics and such. He never said anything overtly racist and I really didn't think much of it other than not wanting to be around him.

Then over time as his team was built ... similar folks with similar views. It wasn't some planned cabal or anything, I don't think they were in a conference room talking about recruiting racists ... it's just that people who were less comfortable tended to want to work elsewhere and those who liked him worked with him and like gravity things sort of just worked out that way.

Then finally he did something monumentally stupid (some text in code ... in a customer environment).

There's some further investigation and yeah some emails are found involving this guy's team and suddenly they're all gone.

In my example it wasn't even that anyone was pushed out for differing views or etc .... they just chose to be elsewhere before they even knew what that guy really thought, and folks with similar views / ok with that guy got closer.

And it might have also been less a racism vibe that people picked up on as much as 'this guy seems like he'd do something unpredictable / is not trustworthy'.

super non-helpful comment deleted -- instead, be good to each other, and I will try also

I gotta be honest and say that I'm not at all sure what you're saying. Clearly there is a very general common theme here about bigotry... but beyond that I'm not sure how your comment is connected to mine.

For the record I'm not in Virginia ... I'm not sure what that or "East Asian companies" has to do with it.

You get paid half a million dollar a year. That's not for your exceptional services, a lot of it is for looking the other way.

There's nothing funny about this. Oh, one thing is really funny. They bought the mask and the book on Amazon ;)

On the one hand I can look at what he did and say that his intent was good and he protected those women and protected his company. However, Mr. Sullivan is clearly taking the law into his own hands (even if that law is in another country).

If you look at this as a business deciding that they want to move forward a business deal elsewhere in the world, they would run afoul of the FCPA if they decided to bribe someone to further that business deal. But it seems that hiring PMCs to intimidate and threaten people is permitted. Perhaps the time has come for legislation to cover this particular practice.

> However, Mr. Sullivan is clearly taking the law into his own hands (even if that law is in another country)

FTA: "Romanian authorities refused to address the problem."

Law is a social construct. If the law does not or will not address material interpersonal harm, taking matters into your own hands is less being a vigilante than it is creative problem-solving.

That's the type of behavior I would applaud. If a country is not handling law enforcement to your satisfaction, then simply don't do business there.

My issue is with an American company literally furthering their business interests by hiring foreign actors to intimidate and threaten. The relevant quote from the article:

"Mr. Sullivan’s team hired Nigerian contractors to confront him."

This article give me the impression that eBay is going to get off scot free in this whole episode. Did the scummy-6 not use eBay's resources in service of its corporate goals to harass/intimidate/terrorize the small-business couple? The operating motto for corporate rule-breaking is "while 1; do-nasty-shit; catch me if you can; oh you did; sorry-bye; goto do-nasty-shit;".

> It was only after Mr. Sullivan’s team shut off eBay access to all of Romania — with a message blaming eBay’s shuttering on Romanian law enforcement’s refusal to pursue online criminals — that Romanian police took action.

Jeez. While I get the frustration that eBay had with fraudsters, this is yet another case (after Amazon trying to extort France in the corona conflict, or Uber and AirBnB ignoring local court orders) of a major US tech company to outright crap on national sovereignity of an European country.

How can us Europeans protect against this kind of moves? Especially with the current US President being someone who would retaliate for anything that he gets complained about?

> major US tech company to outright crap on national sovereignity of an European country.

Isn't this just a modern version of merchants refusing to land at a given port of call because there is no navy defending from pirates, and the pirates know it?

I would argue that this is not anyone crapping on anyone's sovereignty.

Nobody would accuse the company of being pretentious for refusing to let their crews be preyed upon with impunity, it would fall to the local citizens to demand the pirates get gone, or they continue not to be able to get goods from that particular merchant?

US tech companies certainly do have bullying problems. I'm not sure this is one, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

American companies regularly fight with the American government too. There was a story a while back, for example, where the FBI demanded that Apple unlock a mass shooter's phone and Apple refused. If you want companies that consider themselves subservient to the government, you'll probably need to build your own, because Americans just don't think that way.

There is one thing to argue with politicians, that's fine. Ignoring courts however? That is unacceptable in any case as long as the court is not in a banana republic (i.e. truly independent).

Again, Americans don't see it that way. The FBI had a court order for Apple to do it.

The FBI didn't want or need Apple's help unlocking a shooter's iPhone. They wanted Apple to give them a "skeleton key" firmware to unlock all iPhones on their own, without court review. Apple refused.

Yeah, moments like that make me proud to be an American.

Which part of Ebay refusing to do business in Romania is "ignoring courts"?

The grandparent comment (not the story) said some words about US companies not considering themselves "subservient to the government", and the child comment (the one you replied to) said "but these companies have to obey the courts."

I'd say the GP comment over-reached by implying that a US company is not ultimately subject to US law. In principle, the companies do have to obey the courts, although in practice, there are multiple ways for companies to contest the power of a single court.

If appealing to a higher court is what is meant by "ignoring courts and being a banana republic", that doesn't make much sense to me. What's the purpose of having higher courts to appeal to if not so that people or companies can do exactly that? To me, "ignoring a court" is contempt of court, and courts have mechanisms available to them to deal with it. It's the sort of thing people get tossed into prison for. Appealing things to higher courts is not contempt of court.

But I don't see how any of this relates to a merchant refusing to do business in a country that neglects to prosecute thieves and scammers. I assume it's somehow meant to relate to that, since the conversation is threaded that way, but I can't work out the connection.

Why should Ebay be obligated to do business with Romania if Romania refuses to rein in scammers on the platform? It seems Ebay was more important to Romania than Romania was to Ebay since they did in fact do something about the scammers after access was revoked. If they had instead ignored the Ebay block and built their own online platform that would have also been a perfectly acceptable move in line with their sovereign right to choose how they govern their country.

Being free to make judicial decisions such as whether to prosecute online scammers does not free you from the consequences of those decisions. If you want to have access to international platforms you must observe and enforce a set of norms that makes international commerce tenable.

There's nothing wrong about not doing business in a country. You can't force a company to do business in your country. Actions have consequences even for countries.

What does this have to do with sovereignty? They aren't obligated to do business internationally.

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