Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Have you ever been contacted to sell your user's information?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 43 posts

Ask HN: Have you ever been contacted to sell your user's information?

#1

Post by jtgi »

My friend who runs a student service with a couple thousand users was contacted today over Facebook with an offer for his user's emails:

"It's for an event newsletter. Won't say we got it from you."

This ask really bothered me, both from an ethics and pragmatic standpoint. Which got me thinking about the scandals and pressure larger companies, especially ones that are failing or have failed encounter with their user data. At non trivial quantities or certain domains this data must get extremely valuable. Combine this with the increasing likelihood that developers have access to production services and I was left feeling a little uneasy.

Have you ever been contacted as an employee/founder with an offer for your user's data?

What happens to user's data when companies die? Is it purged, sold off, dormant?

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever been contacted to sell your user's information?

#4

Post by Gustomaximus »

Haha that's not dodgy at all. There is a legitimate business around selling data;

This is OK in 3 scenarios I can think offhand: 1) A company collects personal/contact information on behalf of another and is upfront about this at collection 2) A company contacts their list asking if these people would like to share their information with a company 3) Permission to sell information is in the T&C on sign-up of the original company.

If one of these 3 is not covered I image companies should purge data if the business closes. Option 2 would be good for companies that are looking for a cash bump on the way out.

At a financial level I see a bunch of people with lists in the 10's of thousands and they are surprised how little it is worth. To earn a western level income from a contact list you'd likely need a hundred thousand plus of contacts assuming a typical consumer audience and reasonable response rates. Lists are worth significantly more for specific hard to reach groups like CTO's or surgeons etc. For me these would be 15x what I pay against a standard consumer list as a massive generalisation.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever been contacted to sell your user's information?

#5

Post by joedevon »

I was approached a long time ago with an offer to pay for users' info on a forum I ran. You should have seen the shock at my refusal. The buyer just couldn't understand why I wouldn't want to make free money for just selling the list.

Funny, it gave me the impression that I was the first to say no and that most people would gladly sell off people's privacy for a buck. Sad.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever been contacted to sell your user's information?

#6

Post by dsacco »

I've never been contacted to sell user information, but I have been contacted to purchase information. Before I purchased whois privacy on my email's domain, I was frequently propositioned to purchase lists of users and emails relevant to information security and general SaaS products. It was pretty sad, actually. The emails never explained where or how they got the list of users, they just promised I would have an incredible ROI from these "qualified leads."

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever been contacted to sell your user's information?

#7

Post by thrill »

Yes, several years ago I ran a self-created political site in favor of a specific candidate. I stated in the Privacy Notice that all information collected would not be shared and be deleted after the election. As I recall, I collected name, birthdate, gender, email, address because I wanted to correlate and display the info in a summary fashion, and I allowed people to make comments and come back and edit them so I had a password system, and some other things.

I had a few people contact me and offer rather significant money for the info (in total over $10K) if I'd quietly sell them a copy before I deleted it - pretty disappointing to me that they thought I'd do that.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever been contacted to sell your user's information?

#8

Post by Foy »

bratsche wrote: post #3

Your friend could always fight shady with shady. Write a script to randomly generate a few thousand email addresses that look like they might be real. :)

Fighting a somewhat reasonable request with fraud seems right out of the gray zone and solidly in the territory of immorality.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever been contacted to sell your user's information?

#9

Post by bsbechtel »

joedevon wrote: post #5

I was approached a long time ago with an offer to pay for users' info on a forum I ran. You should have seen the shock at my refusal. The buyer just couldn't understand why I wouldn't want to make free money for just selling the list. Funny, it gave me the impression that I was the first to say no and that most people would gladly sell off people's privacy for a buck. Sad.

I'd say the buyer's shock was just a negotiating tactic...I've seen this used in many different situations. That said, I certainly wouldn't be surprised that most people would gladly sell off people's privacy for easy money.
Post reply on HN