[ISN] Twitter Hacking Spurs Ethics Debate Over Leaked Files

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/15/twitter-hacking-spurs-ethics-debate-over-leaked-files/

By Marisa Taylor
The Wall Street Journal
Digits
July 15, 2009

The hacking of Twitter CEO Evan Williams.s email account has sparked an 
ethics debate after TechCrunch said that it would publish some of the 
confidential documents that the hacker leaked.

The brouhaha began when TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington blogged 
that a French hacker calling himself "Hacker Croll" said he had broken 
into Mr. Williams's account as well as those of Mr. Williams's wife and 
two Twitter employees.

An English translation of a post on French blog Koren shows that the 
hacker claims he gained access to Mr. Williams's Gmail, PayPal, Amazon 
and AT&T accounts, among others, and thus was able to find documents 
containing Twitter employee food preferences, credit card numbers, phone 
numbers and salaries.

Mr. Williams confirmed that he had indeed been hacked, writing, "It was 
a good lesson for us that we are being targeted because we work for 
Twitter. We have taken extra steps to increase our security, but we know 
we can never be entirely comfortable with what we share via email."

Mr. Arrington said TechCrunch would publish some of the documents it 
received, including the pitch for a Twitter-related reality-TV show.

[...]


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