Not really answering the question: I interviewed at a company that measured Internet traffic and would do so by installing proxy servers in popular software downloads. This was 15+ years ago now. I suppose this was the early versions of spyware. I got an offer but never took it because I disliked the concept and multiple layers of deception to the end user. no regrets here, but i always wondered how people could work on such products.
Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
51–60 of 539 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#52I used to work for a company whose product was a specialized proxy server aimed at telco companies. The thesis was that telco companies (at the time, this was quite some time ago) were heavy users of telnet and ssh to administer network devices, and needed some tooling to help manage them all. So our device would proxy telnet and ssh connections, and do things like looking at the hostname and the login prompt and automatically submit the correct credentials, and then further do things like blocking certain commands from being run, providing pre-configured scripts for certain tasks, yadda yadda yadda.
Now that's all fine and good as such. I had no qualms about working on that stuff. But then somebody introduced the idea of capturing frequent screen-grabs (essentially video, albeit at a fairly low frame rate) of the user's desktop as they used the system. We worked out a way to do some weird windows network driver shenanigans to make sure the recording started when an outgoing connection was made to certain destinations, and then streamed the video to a server where it was stored.
The nominal purpose for this was advertised as "training" with a side-dish of "compliance enforcement", and probably in some highly regulated industries people will (and do?) accept this sort of thing. But it never sat well with me, and I felt a bit queasy about working on that aspect of the product.
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#53coded email targeting for people with financial problems / poor credit and offered them sketchy credit repair deals or cash advance loans with rates that were essentially usury
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#54A ticketing company was experimenting with BLE beacons to trigger things like seat upgrades and coupons when people walked by certain things in a venue… or at least that’s what they said it would be used for. Instead they covered LA Live and surrounding area with them and then just sold that data to… well I’m not sure who since I left shortly after they did that. The justification was “but we put it in the TOS and Pr…
How did the BLE beacons track people? A phone app?
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#55A system for tracking email marketing recipients. That is, bounce rates, open rates, recurrence and deduplication of email addresses.
It dawned on me 10-20 hours into the gig that these customers were professional spammers, and that I was helping them avoid being blacklisted.
I scrapped everything I’d made and eventually paid back my fee.
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#56Too many things related to cryptocurrency.
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#57The Qatar slave helmet. My company built the smart helmet used to track Qatar’s army of abused workers. The claim is GPS and accelerometer where used to track if a worker stopped moving or fell due to an accident; the geo fencing was supposedly for tracking if they had enough workers in an area for the job. The reality is the helmets where/are used as mass surveillance tech to ensure workers are continuously active a…
This comment is now one of the top hits on Google for "Qatar slave helmet". And it's the only hit when I put quotes around the phrase to force an exact match.
If this is real you should get in touch with investigative journalists, e.g. ProPublica.
("Get in touch with investigative journalists" probably applies to a bunch of the people posting in this thread.)
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#58A WooCommerce shop I built in a couple of days ended up making millions of dollars for the catholic church... I learned to research who I'm working for
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#59My first job was for a sketchy knock off autoparts company that was a glorified drop shipper. I built a dozen websites and a database of a few million rows. I was proud of it at the time. Then I started reading customer support emails, took a few phone calls from disgruntled customers, and it turns out the company was just cycling cash. Would charge 100 orders and float the cash as it trickled out refunds. I ended up…
Was that just a very high return rate or an outright scam? If the latter how could they sell for anything?
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#60An xml parser.