Hacker News Reader

Comment by hoppyhoppy2 | Hacker News Reader

If I were to parse this comment in a lawyerly way, I'd conclude you didn't actually say whether your service does or does not sell users' financial data (or whether it plans to do so). Can you confirm for us your company's practices?

View on HN

We do not sell any financial data and we do not intend on doing so in the future.

The fact that this is a VC-backed startup pretty much guarantees it will be doing nefarious things with its users' data somewhere down the line. Even if not intended right now.

This is an unfair comment because it's stated as a "pretty much" fact when it's simply your opinion.

Additionally, the fact that it's a "VC-backed startup" is irrelevant. Any company with any structure could be doing this.

Eh not really. Having VC backing means you have an extra incentive to do things that a bootstrapped company wouldn't, mainly to please your investors.

Well, either it's in the TOS or it's not. Simple. And if it is now, and it vanishes, well, you know what to do.

Either a business can thrive without selling user data, or it can’t. If it can’t, then eventually the data will fall in the hands of someone willing to sell it. It doesn’t matter if that someone is current management (perhaps under pressure from VCs) or future management (after inevitable acquisition or asset liquidation since the business is not viable). Therefore it does not matter how current management feels about selling user data today, or whether they are vc-funded or bootstrapped. If they aren’t building a viable business, the data they are collecting will be sold eventually.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com