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Comment by usui | Hacker News Reader

> Prior to the email and call, I had neither met nor heard of the person who emailed me about this leak. They asked that their identity remain veiled

And yet the journalist included a screenshot with one of the weakest blurs I've ever seen... Why would you not excise the person's video portion completely? What good does it serve to have it included in the story? Even if that portion is faked, why would you offer potential signals like skin complexion, hair color, background picture, etc.? Why...

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The author is Rand Fishkin, who's not a journalist. He's the founder of SparkToro and Moz, both companies that provide tooling and analytics for SEO.

I haven't looked deeply into Fishkin's companies, but I wouldn't expect either to be on the user's side when it comes to privacy. Both companies seem to monetize clickstream data and personal information from users who probably didn't give informed consent.

If the source was trying to get this information to a responsible journalist who cares about privacy, I have no idea why they'd approach a company (not even a news organization) who seems to fund the erosion of user privacy.

And since then, the person on the call has revealed their identity. This was an SEO bro talking to an SEO bro about something they found on Github, not an insider leak.

> Both companies seem to monetize clickstream data and personal information from users who probably didn't give informed consent.

I don't think you know what you're talking about. During Rand's tenure Moz was a subscription business selling access to marketing analytics tools. Those tools focused on the structure of the clients' sites themselves rather than any analytics they might have consumed.

Source: I worked at Moz for several of those years, and helped maintain those tools.

>weakest blurs I've ever seen

Isn't this the same type of "swirl" blur that Interpol was able to reverse even 10 years back? With advancements since then you're basically handing evidence on a silver platter.

To make it worse, he made clear when the call had happened, and you have: 1) Who was in the call 2) When the call happened 3) A blur instead of a complete black out

I'm not sure I would feel safe reporting stuff to journalists nowadays.

This person is not a journalist.

That also struck me as odd. And seemingly a violation of journalistic best-practices of protecting sources. I sure hope this was done with consent of the anonymous source.

It's a fake background.

It's also clearly from Google Meet so... yeah. If he was worried about retribution (from Google, anyway) then they probably wouldn't have been using a Google service.

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