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

Glassdoor not so anonymous

webworm.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 507 posts

Re: Glassdoor not so anonymous

#141

Post by cortesoft »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #131

> As for their first point, statements of “pure opinion” are protected by the First Amendment in America. But New Zealand doesn’t have this. Statements of opinion are not categorically protected. Instead, it all comes down to “the honest-opinion defense”. This is the most surprising part of this article to me. Not the NZ one, but the US one. Does this mean you can say whatever you want in the US without risking be la…

First amendment rights are pretty sacred here. Generally, yes, you can say whatever you want without LEGAL consequences.

For a defamation case to succeed in the US, the accuser has to prove that a statement was made that a reasonable person would interpret as a statement of fact. That means that something like "zuru is the worst place to work in the world!" would not put the person at risk of losing a defamation case, because "worst place in the world" is subjective, and no reasonable person would think it is an objective fact.

If they said something like "zuru management ate my babies!".... well, that still wouldn't get them in trouble because it is so obviously not true that no reasonable person would think it was a statement of fact.

If they said, "zuru didn't pay me my last paycheck," well then you might be at risk for defamation if it turns out they did actually pay you (the truth is always an absolute defense in the US, so you can't get in trouble for saying something that is true)

Now, even if it wasn't true, the accuser still has to prove that the person either KNEW it wasn't true, or completely disregarded whether it was true or not when they made the statement.

It is hard to get someone in trouble for what they write or say in the US.

Re: Glassdoor not so anonymous

#142

Post by trhway »

The US court deciding under New Zealand law is bad, very bad:

"Here, then, the question under New Zealand law ..."

The day the courts here decide to pay attention to say the Russian or Saudi laws a lot of people would get in a lot of trouble.

Re: Glassdoor not so anonymous

#143

Post by noisy_boy »

gumby wrote: post #62
Mandatum wrote: post #2

Glassdoor has posted a notice on ZURU's page regarding this: https://www.glassdoor.com.au/Reviews/ZURU-Reviews-E2286297.h... It appears a few other companies are doing this too, including Kraken ( https://www.kraken.com/ ) as you can see here: https://www.glassdoor.com.au/Overview/Working-at-Kraken-Digi... EDIT: If anyone from Glassdoor is reading this, please advise on a way to either unlink my profile from my ident…

That may not help former zuru’s employees but obviously is a clear message to prospective ones. A nice FU from Glassdoor. More interestingly it’s a nice way to forestall future lawsuits as well.

Not a good look on the current employees either that their firm sues for bad feedback. Probably good idea to start looking to move on to firms with better practices.

Re: Glassdoor not so anonymous

#144

Post by dylan604 »

rodgerd wrote: post #117
dylan604 wrote: post #36

Would these companies have a case if an employee left refusing to sign the paper work agreeing to not talk shit? One company I left tied their severance package to a signature on that kind of agreement.

They aren't planning on suing for a breach of NDA. They're planning on suing under defamation law, which alone will cost the former employees tens of thousands, if not hundreds, to defend; if they can't defend their case - and as the article says, opinion is not automatically protected under New Zealand law - it appears that they will be suing for "increased recruitment costs", which sounds like it could be construed…

They have 5000+ employees. I don't think their recruiting efforts have been hindered. The CEO's decision to pursue this has a larger negative effect than the comments on Glassdoor. I'm evidence as I had never heard of this company, do not peruse Glassdoor, but now I know this company's name and that the CEO is a tosser.

Re: Glassdoor not so anonymous

#145

Post by parineum »

altdataseller wrote: post #100
chaps wrote: post #35

Once had a contract where my client wanted me to do "security work", which was initially meant to be for pentesting their clients, but it turned into me building their wifi auth system. At some point in the gig, one of their clients went to them asking them if it was possible to de-anonymize someone glassdoor review since someone still-employed worked with them. They then went to me to see if I could do it for them.…

It might be possible to do linguistic analysis (ie. What they did to catch the Unabomber) to compare the language they used in the review vs how someone usually write in things like performance reviews, manager evaluations, emails, etc

> What they did to catch the Unabomber

Have everyone's siblings read all the reviews and see if anyone recognized it?

Re: Glassdoor not so anonymous

#146

Post by mmaunder »

Giving a company your real identity and trusting them to keep you anonymous isn’t a good idea. Either keep yourself anonymous online using your own open source toolset, or consider yourself identified when doing anything.

Re: Glassdoor not so anonymous

#147

Post by batch12 »

A site that promises anonymity without ensuring that compelling identifying data is technically impossible is unfortunate. They are one good breach away from ruining many lives.

Re: Glassdoor not so anonymous

#148

Post by roywiggins »

surement wrote: post #99

This is interesting but a more accurate title would be "New Zealand law allows corporations to sue Glassdoor for user data." As the article notes: > statements of “pure opinion” are protected by the First Amendment in America. But New Zealand doesn’t have this. Statements of opinion are not categorically protected. That said, the warning that Glassdoor adds to the pages of companies that do this has to be the biggest…

A US court deciding to go along with it is news, though.

Re: Glassdoor not so anonymous

#149

Post by koolba »

babyshake wrote: post #137
atwood22 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s a managed corporate laptop that uses Chrome, then they could remotely check the browser history, likely directly to the review itself.

If you sign into a personal Google account on a new Chrome profile on a managed laptop, can they get access to your entire Google account (drive, emails, etc.) remotely? Can they use an auth token or something to automate the process of downloading all your data? If so, is this legal?

> If so, is this legal?

If it’s a company provided laptop then it’s a good idea to assume that every keystroke, DNS request, and network packet is fair game.

Laptops are cheap. There’s no reason to mix personal and corporate usage.

Re: Glassdoor not so anonymous

#150

Post by kornhole »

My learning is that we should never trust any site that says a form is anonymous. Use TOR and a disposable email alias to create account. If they have anything that blocks using either, don't participate if you want to be anonymous.
Post reply on HN