Should A Blog Publish Hacked Information? TechCrunch Did

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TechCrunch published a blog post last night disclosing financial projections of Twitter, which it admitted was obtained by a an anonymous hacker which had gained “easy access” to hundreds of pieces of internal Twitter information, from pass codes to meeting minutes, and then forwarded the data to the news website.

“We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker, and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or publishes these stolen documents,” Twitter said in an official blog post.

Michael Arrington, founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, defended its right to make the material public, saying it would exercise restraint on material such as personnel records.

“We’ve spent most of the evening reading these documents. The vast majority of them are somewhat embarrassing to various individuals, but not otherwise interesting,” Arrington wrote.

“But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it’s appropriate to publish them.”

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  1. Reece Berg says

    Legal or not, it’s definitely unethical in my opinion. I wouldn’t post a company’s confidential information for a few extra page views…

  3. Domain Investor says

    I also read that yesterday on TechCrunch.
    It really bothered me for a couple reasons.

    1. Michael knows better since he was a lawyer in the venture capital industry.

    2. By publishing it, he is promoting the hackers actions and others will copy cat it.

    3. The information was probably confidential that they would not want publish.

    4. The information was stolen. And, he is attempting to profit (more traffic) from stolen information.

    I realize no one would have known but I refused to read past the first couple sentences. I felt it was none of my business.

  4. steve dowripple says

    Hey guys, the house and the end of the street leaves their back door unlocked all the time. They’ll be out all week. Just letting the world know.

  5. jp says

    Isn’t it illegal to read any stolen information if you are aware that it is stolen, whether or not you publish it? I thought that “legally” you were required to turn it over to the authorities or something like that upon finding out it is stolen. Just the impression I was under for some reason, not sure why. I could be very wrong.