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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

#151

Hi there, I’m Dave and I work at AngelList on our Talent platform. Please accept our sincere apologies for what happened here. Sending an email without giving you a heads-up or control over its content was wrong. Here’s what we’re doing to fix it: * We’ve made it clearer that tagging a company on a project may notify them by email. * We’ve revised the project tagging email to clarify that it’s automatically generated…

"I'm sorry" is an apology. "Please accept our apologies" is a reference to an apology.

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

#152
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.

These are two different things: 1. Hi, my name is John, I am contacting you on behalf of wojt_eu to confirm that he has been added to the "Cool New Project" as lead DEV. 2. Hi, it's me wojt_eu, I just wanted you to confirm that I've been added to the "Cool New Project" as lead DEV. You can legally authorize someone to act on your behalf, in basically any Western Nation - although rules as to how this work will vary,…

> authorizing someone to impersonate you I don't believe would be made legal anywhere

I think you're confused. Celebrities hire third parties to tweet for them all the time. That's essentially impersonation.

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

#153

Hi there, I’m Dave and I work at AngelList on our Talent platform. Please accept our sincere apologies for what happened here. Sending an email without giving you a heads-up or control over its content was wrong. Here’s what we’re doing to fix it: * We’ve made it clearer that tagging a company on a project may notify them by email. * We’ve revised the project tagging email to clarify that it’s automatically generated…

This is damage control. You clearly want to make people update their profiles or whatever by pretending to be somebody else they know.

You went with an immoral strategy to grow your business and that now it has finally hit you in the face on a very visible website you are here to be all apologetics. It's the "easier to ask for forgiveness rather than permission" strategy and it is deliberate thus I must conclude that your apology is insincere and is only an attempt at limiting the backlash against you.

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

#154

Hi there, I’m Dave and I work at AngelList on our Talent platform. Please accept our sincere apologies for what happened here. Sending an email without giving you a heads-up or control over its content was wrong. Here’s what we’re doing to fix it: * We’ve made it clearer that tagging a company on a project may notify them by email. * We’ve revised the project tagging email to clarify that it’s automatically generated…

I'm speechless. That's an absolutely terrible idea.

Are you guys trying to sends us all back to LinkedIn?

Any kind of notification is a dead give away you're looking for another job.

I guess this goes to show that AngelList is all about the "Angels" and gives no f*cks about the talent.

Shameful and sad. Time to kiss AngelList goodbye.

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

#155
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No! If an offence is criminal it can't be magically made OK by a contract. I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

Of course it can. Lack of consent is a key element in many crimes. Rape, for example.

This is not an appropriate analogy. You are reversing the situation.

Terms and conditions and even contracts are often inadmissible. Just because you signed something, doesn't mean it's valid. Being handcuffed to a contract happens only in the movies,

I am not a lawyer.

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

#157

When our CEO added me to our angel list account, I recieved this email from them: Hi [My Name], I'm building an AngelList profile for [our company] and need your help. Can you do me a favor and confirm that you're a team member by clicking here: https://angel.co/l/[shortlink] To prove that you're the real [My Name] you will be asked to create an account if you don't already have one. This is important to us; confirmi…

I got that message a while back and up until this moment had genuinely believed that was a message from our CEO.

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

#158
post #147

When our CEO added me to our angel list account, I recieved this email from them: Hi [My Name], I'm building an AngelList profile for [our company] and need your help. Can you do me a favor and confirm that you're a team member by clicking here: https://angel.co/l/[shortlink] To prove that you're the real [My Name] you will be asked to create an account if you don't already have one. This is important to us; confirmi…

I know almost nothing about law, but that has to be illegal in some way, right?

Perhaps not criminally, as some nugget buried deep in the Terms of Service probably gives them a contractual right to do this with the nominal assent of the users, but even if it's contractually valid it strikes me unconscionable and open to challenge in civil court. It also seems like a spectacularly self-defeating business strategy, but then again I thought the same thing about all those 'one weird trick...' adverts.

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

#159
post #26

This might be "false personation" under California law. See California penal code 529.[1] This is slightly different from identity theft. It's a criminal offense. The key elements of this offense are that someone else impersonated you in some way, and they derived some benefit from doing so. Because this is a criminal offense, AngelList's TOS's arbitration clause does not apply. You can file a police report with the…

Unless you have authorized them to do this under the Terms and Conditions of course.....

A contract that requires a party to do something illegal is inherently unenforceable.

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

To illustrate why this is the case, we can look at an extreme example: a contract to have someone murdered. Would a court enforce that? Of course not.

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

#160

Hi there, I’m Dave and I work at AngelList on our Talent platform. Please accept our sincere apologies for what happened here. Sending an email without giving you a heads-up or control over its content was wrong. Here’s what we’re doing to fix it: * We’ve made it clearer that tagging a company on a project may notify them by email. * We’ve revised the project tagging email to clarify that it’s automatically generated…

"I'm sorry" is an apology. "Please accept our apologies" is a reference to an apology.

Seriously? The whole post is an apology. A guy named Dave is publicly saying he screwed up. He's saying his name, he's wrapping his identity up in this screw up, he's giving reasoning into their decision and what they're doing to fix it, and he's providing ways to give suggestions to fix this. But this isn't good enough to you because literally the words "I'm" and "sorry" weren't next to each other?

If he didn't take the time to respond and explain things, you might have a point. But this seems like a knee-jerk reaction that doesn't fit the response that was given by Dave.

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