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Tell HN: AngelList told my employer that I'd updated my profile

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Re: Tell HN: AngelList told my employer that I'd updated my profile

#91

Post by [deleted] »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #81
wojt_eu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it make it impossible under California law to have an agent that impersonate me? Have them tweet from my account, reply to emails in my name etc.

I have no idea. My post was more general and about principles rather than specifics. I have no knowledge of the specifics of the relevant terms of service for this company, I also don't know whether they form a binding contract in the relevant jurisdiction or what things are specifically legal to do in contracts in the relevant jurisdiction. I repeat that I am not a lawyer so if this is important to you then hire a l…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: AngelList told my employer that I'd updated my profile

#92

Post by dhimes »

halotrope wrote: post #56

Thank you for sharing the news. I have just deleted my account. In case someone has problems as well finding out how: 1. Click your profile picture on the top right corner 2. Click settings in the dropdown. 3. Click Delete account 4. ? 5. Profit

What are the odds that works?

Re: Tell HN: AngelList told my employer that I'd updated my profile

#93

Post by IanCal »

OJFord wrote: post #60
IanCal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison to stealing is frankly ridiculous, as the law doesn't say you can't transfer money. It will explicitly talk about consent. If contracts allowed you to agree to anything then minimum wage laws couldn't work. Which side the impersonation laws fall on will depend on how they're written.

What about boxing, martial arts sparring, fencing, assisted suicide, and voting by proxy? The point here is that you either _can_ contract your way out, or (what I suspect is the case) there re exclusions in the law were relevant. Either way, it suggests this might not be illegal if covered by something blindly tick-boxed.

You cannot, uniformly, give people the ability to do anything to you. That's the point I'm making.

> What about boxing, martial arts sparring, fencing

Consent only works up to a point. I cannot consent to you stabbing me or beating me into a bloody pulp.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_(criminal_law)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Brown

It's worth noting that bare knuckle boxing is illegal in the UK, and you can't just sign a document to do it.

> assisted suicide

Assisted suicide is illegal in the UK. It does not matter if the patient signs a contract to say it's OK, it's still illegal.

Re: Tell HN: AngelList told my employer that I'd updated my profile

#94

Post by notalaser »

dchest wrote: post #43
Karunamon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, you cannot contract your way out of criminal law.

In this case, every giving would be stealing. If I gave you something, you didn't steal it from me. Likewise, if I gave you the right to impersonate me in particular circumstances, it's not a criminal offense if you do.

It depends on where you are in the world, but in most places in the civilized world, criminal law does not work that way. If something is illegal, we cannot sign a contract that says it's ok between you and me, and magically make it legal. E.g. if I kill someone, the state will prosecute me for murder, regardless of whether or not that guy and I signed a contract that said it was fine.

If impersonating someone is a criminal offense in a particular jurisdiction, then -- assuming that jurisdiction has a sane criminal code -- there is no way to make it legal through a contract.

Edit: there are good reasons why this is in place, the most relevant of which is that it provides protection against abuses. Otherwise, we'd have things like employers that would still be at liberty to use lashing and beating as disciplinary action against employees who don't really have a choice about signing a contract or not.

Re: Tell HN: AngelList told my employer that I'd updated my profile

#95

Post by troels »

lordnacho wrote: post #37
DonHopkins wrote: post #11

I had big problems with the "Angel List" web site, because it was extremely flakey and appeared to be a typical piece of garbage that some dime-a-dozen huckster with very little experience had just thrown together after watching the Ruby on Rails Make Your Own Trendy Dot Com Crud Web Site in 10 Minutes screencast. Major features were totally broken. Many things about the design were devoid of thought and just haphaza…

I regularly get messages from startups who are interested in me on AL. Every time I answer, I click the "I'm interested" button, and I add a message saying that there might be something up with the site. I never hear anything back even though the other side initiated the interest. I also get an email from an AL engineer now and again asking if things are working. Not sure they are getting my responses, because they s…

You reply back to the startups that there is something wrong with the AL site?

Re: Tell HN: AngelList told my employer that I'd updated my profile

#96

Post by dhimes »

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #61
Hytosys wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employers are necessarily oppressive and may fire employees over this sort of notification if the listed project or the AngelList profile in general is against business interests. If it wasn't clear already, this sort of move shows exactly who AngelList is serving. After all, as you said, how will the employer, in their contractual fantasies, ever be able to confirm that a potential interviewee is telling the truth ?

I don't work for AngelList however I think this is overblown. If you add yourself to an open site, your employer will see it. It is indexed on Google. It shows up when you search the site for the organization. Are you saying as an owner of an organization, you are happy for anyone to claim to be an employee and to have done any project at your company without you knowing? Should I be able to claim I did the Dropbox A…

The creepy part to me is that the email pretended to be from the employee, not AL. I am actually curious to know exactly what that email looked like.

Re: Tell HN: AngelList told my employer that I'd updated my profile

#97

Post by morninj »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #79
abritishguy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreeing to the terms could be giving permission though...

That would be for a court to decide and I doubt that any of us are qualified to advise the GP (I certainly am not!).

There are lots of competent tech lawyers on HN.

Re: Tell HN: AngelList told my employer that I'd updated my profile

#98

Post by enzanki_ars »

solve wrote: post #65

Edit: Oh cool, Hackernews still has this account rank-banned so the comments always stay at the bottom of the page no matter how many upvotes they get. So happy that I'm not the only one who was extremely surprised and upset about Angel List's impersonation tactics. In my experience, 100% of the people who received this impersonation email that angel.co sent, thought it was written by me. If the system wants to send…

In the past couple of weeks I began signing my emails with PGP. Those who are technically inclined can ensure that I sent it, and those not would be a little more suspicious of an automated looking email without a random string of characters at the end.

Re: Tell HN: AngelList told my employer that I'd updated my profile

#99

Post by OJFord »

ams6110 wrote: post #87
OJFord wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about boxing, martial arts sparring, fencing, assisted suicide, and voting by proxy? The point here is that you either _can_ contract your way out, or (what I suspect is the case) there re exclusions in the law were relevant. Either way, it suggests this might not be illegal if covered by something blindly tick-boxed.

You seem to be opertating under the delusion that the law is logically consistent. It isn't. There are some things you can allow by contract/permission and some things you cannot, and circumstance matters.

No, I'm not. I'm responding to the blanket statement to the contrary. I fully expect that it's a case of cased exclusions as I've said in another comment.

Re: Tell HN: AngelList told my employer that I'd updated my profile

#100

Post by danenania »

If you're looking for a place to list your projects that doesn't do spammy/scammy stuff like this, check out MakerSlate, a résumé tool I created that's tailored to devs and designers. I built it partly out of frustration with these sorts of practices.

http://makerslate.io

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