When Leaving Yahoo To Work For A Competitor, Don't Discuss Plans On Yahoo IM
from the just-a-suggestion dept
Yahoo has apparently sued mobile gaming company Mforma, claiming that a bunch of Yahoo employees left together to go to Mforma and took with them trade secrets. These sorts of disputes are fairly common, and usually end in some kind of settlement (in fact, Yahoo just settled a very similar lawsuit that was directed at them). However, what's interesting here is that the Yahoo employees apparently discussed their plans on company laptops using Yahoo's instant messaging program. It's not entirely clear what they discussed, and whether or not it really is directly relevant. However, it still seems like a good idea, that if you are thinking of ditching Yahoo to work somewhere else with a group of your co-workers, you probably shouldn't discuss those plans using Yahoo's own communications tools. Just a thought.
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No Subject Given
How did they find this information out? Do they only go through all their own employees logs? Were the logs from their laptops, or from Yahoo's servers?
Are the employees told their logs will be read in clear terms? Or is it really the that we should all expect someone is reviewing everything that we say?
I know it feels that way, but if it truly is that way, its a big leap.
I know about Echelon, but this is a private company, and not email which obviously does reside on their servers. IM is supposed to be person to person without intermediaries.
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It doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling to know that Yahoo archives IM conversations. It would be a worthwhle research article for someone to review the privacy policies of each of the major IM services.
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email isn't private, IM isn't private, in each, since there is an itermediary, everyone should expect that anything they say can and will be read by someone other than they intended. Not only that, nothing prevents people from publishing those communications, including IM logs. (Not to mention the IM filter applications and boxes that log all IM activity on a corporate network)
You have been warned, now carry on, I have some emails to read - Ted over in accounting is having a fight with his soon to be ex-girlfriend....
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There's a distinction to be made . .
Anyone working at any decent sized company should assume that all communications of any kind belong to that company and are subject to interception/retrieval. Those folks who were leaving were naive or dumb not to assume this.
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It's not surprising Yahoo would check this info if the laptops were company-pwned (whoops, little l33t h@x0R slipped in there). NEVER assume anything you do on a company laptop is private, esp. if you and a bunch of your friends are about to jump ship for the same company.
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Something you might want to consider is an IM encryption program. I use SimpLite, http://www.secway.com.
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Furthermore, who's going to watch out for the terrorists?
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use OTR or similar
So, use "Off The Record" (OTR) - there's a plugin for gaim - which means that you don't have to trust the IM server.
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