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Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#231

Post by jrs95 »

Rjevski wrote: post #210
jrs95 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I don’t think scamming people who intend to buy stolen electronics is particularly unethical anyways. It’s sort of like...profitable vigilante justice.

Unless the electronics were branded as stolen I wouldn’t immediately assume malicious intent from the buyers. People might have all kinds of reasons buying those electronics anonymously - maybe there are no other channels to get them from (oppressive government restricting features like VoIP in iPhones, etc) in which case the “dark” web is the most logical place to go to get a clean device.

They weren’t branded as such but the store(s) only existing on the deep web plus the incredibly low pricing made it obvious that these couldn’t have been obtained legitimately, if they were really selling anything at all and not just scamming people out of BTC. I highly doubt anyone capable of finding and using these sites could actually be dumb enough to believe it was anything other than stolen electronics (or a scam).

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#232

Post by fucking_tragedy »

fao_ wrote: post #219
iamleppert wrote: post #209

I created software that was used by call center agents to bid on “bathroom” break time slots and kept track of who was on break and actively punished those who didn’t follow the rules. It rewarded those that had higher performance and who took less breaks with higher priority. If an agent didn’t come back from their break a security guard would automatically be dispatched to find them. For the same company I also mad…

I have to ask, why did you choose to take the contract? Financial pressures? Or did you not feel that such a system is morally reprehensible? Personally while I'm opposed to programmer certification, systems like these certainly make me wish such a thing existed.

There will always be someone who can find a moral reason that such systems need to exist. Engineers build weapons, after all.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#233

Post by nodesocket »

The one example I am willing to share is in high school economics class there was a stock market simulation. The person with the highest portfolio balance at the end of the year received a substantial amount of extra credit.

First of all, this was 1999, and the market (tech-stocks) were in peak ridiculous bubble mode. The hack was that the software used to simulate trades and track portfolios used delayed quotes. So, I simply used real-time quotes looked for gains in a short period and bought held for a bit, then sold. Essentially I had a time machine. I think at the end of year my account had over $500 million in it. The teacher knew I was "cheating" but still gave me the extra credit along with another student who didn't "cheat". An extra perk is the cutest girls in that class constantly asked me how I had so much in my portfolio.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#234

Post by ibudiallo »

iamleppert wrote: post #209

I created software that was used by call center agents to bid on “bathroom” break time slots and kept track of who was on break and actively punished those who didn’t follow the rules. It rewarded those that had higher performance and who took less breaks with higher priority. If an agent didn’t come back from their break a security guard would automatically be dispatched to find them. For the same company I also mad…

hmmmm, you and I need to have a little talk...

Edit: Since I am getting downvoted, I will just add context -> https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me

I was on the other end of a similar system.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#235

Post by pbhowmic »

I used to work for a company that used a provision in the tax code - I can't remember if it was a California state or US tax break - for training their employees. They used to count meetings as training sessions and would make attendees sign attendance sheets to present that as "proof of training".

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#236

Post by iamdave »

movedx wrote: post #196

Not a programmer at the time, but a system administrator. I won't mention the company. This was 2011-2012 -ish. We hosted dedicated servers and most of the time, they were mostly Plesk or cPanel servers run by people selling email and or web hosting to hundreds of clients from a single server. This one time a client joins the network, buys a server from us, and migrates from Rackspace. We wondered why he'd move from…

.....isn't HostGator by chance is it? Sounds like the kind of stuff they would have pulled back in their days

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#237

Post by jessaustin »

throwacake wrote: post #54

I present security research in big conferences. This means that I find a serious security threat that affects many systems, and then I do not say anything to anyone for 6 months so that, when I do, I can get more publicity.

Don't you typically inform the system's owner as soon as you discover the vuln? You still get "credit" in that case, don't you? Somehow I suspect you're not really a security researcher...

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#238

Post by user5994461 »

scott-smith_us wrote: post #182
radicalbyte wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case you got lucky; other times you'll underestimate the amount of effort required. In the end it'll even out.

I still think they could have charged for less than the full month. The goodwill and trust that would have engendered would probably have been more than worth it in the long run.

Absolutely not. The client will either take you as shady or incompetent for being that much wrong in your estimate.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#239

Post by angersock »

movedx wrote: post #196

Not a programmer at the time, but a system administrator. I won't mention the company. This was 2011-2012 -ish. We hosted dedicated servers and most of the time, they were mostly Plesk or cPanel servers run by people selling email and or web hosting to hundreds of clients from a single server. This one time a client joins the network, buys a server from us, and migrates from Rackspace. We wondered why he'd move from…

That sounds like Hostgator.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#240

Post by jessaustin »

Rjevski wrote: post #217
lunulata wrote: post #81

Implemented APIs for clients that were based on scraping data from other competitor sites that did not give permission, it's some kind of service hi-jacking. Similarly, implemented some clone sites that just rip off other people's work #zuckerberging Some bug bounties ask pentesters not to hit their production servers hard with automated tools... I've ignored this to find some bugs in production servers on occasion.

Scraping is not unethical IMO. If you make the data public then everyone has the right to use it for whatever reason. Arbitrarily restricting what the data can be used for is what I would call unethical.

Scraping becomes unethical when it turns into a DOS, doesn't it? In some cases it wouldn't be an issue, but some scraping definitely makes the service less responsive.
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