jtgi

My friend who runs a student service with a couple thousand users was contacted today over Facebook with an offer for his user's emails:

"It's for an event newsletter. Won't say we got it from you."

This ask really bothered me, both from an ethics and pragmatic standpoint. Which got me thinking about the scandals and pressure larger companies, especially ones that are failing or have failed encounter with their user data. At non trivial quantities or certain domains this data must get extremely valuable. Combine this with the increasing likelihood that developers have access to production services and I was left feeling a little uneasy.

Have you ever been contacted as an employee/founder with an offer for your user's data?

What happens to user's data when companies die? Is it purged, sold off, dormant?