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Comment by ctdonath | Hacker News Reader

Legally obligated? no. It's not your system, it's not your problem in that sense.

Sure you can offer to fix it, but since you don't know squat about the system (save for a small flaw at the surface) and they have teams of developers who do, they won't be interested in paying you to fix it. Offering to explain the bug for a fee won't be blackmail unless you threaten to reveal the bug to others if they don't pay up.

Be a decent chap. Send 'em a nice letter explaining the problem. It's your bank, remember, and they're humans like you; work with your service providers to improve the service. Assume you're not the only one who knows about the problem, that someone who also knows isn't as nice as you, and it's YOUR bank balance that is at risk.

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But it's a corporation, not humans like you. I'm sure they employ lots of decent people. I'm sure they employ lots of douchebags too. It's irrelevant. It's a corporation who's only motivation is to make money. It's not your neighbour.

If you like their service and feel like telling them then go for it. If you want to try to charge them, then go for it (no it doesn't make you evil to charge for a service). If they don't want to pay you, feel free to say nothing.

Now if it's a mom and pop shop down the street, then yes, please be a good neighbour and help them fix it (although you can still charge for it, but avoid douchebaggery like $300 / hour unless that's your usual rate).

Hmmm. How successful does the mom and pop have to be before you feel no obligation to tell them?

When Mom and Pop work in a corporate office.

As a general rule for me it's once a company goes public.

At that point the company is subject to practically anonymous shareholders through many levels of abstraction. Voting is then done based purely on financials and often short term gains, which really puts a company at odds with their customers. So I have no customer loyalty to a company that's publicly traded.

Many private companies can still maintain my loyalty though based purely on their actions if the owner(s) / investors aren't completely disconnected from their customers. That's more of a case by case. The smaller they are, the more likely they care about their customers (there are always exceptions though).

Of course then there is the saying "No good deed goes unpunished."

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