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by logicallee 3403 days ago
>Many do on an anonymous chat app called Blind.

...

>And over 2,000 Uber employees in total use Blind, says Blind's head of operations Alex Shin.

Jebediah O. Springfield! As the "head of operations" at an "anonymous chat app" you have ONE JOB, Alex Shin! And you just blew it.

(To be explicit, I am saying Alex is way out of line for disclosing this information. An anonymous app should not have such information revealed even in the aggregrate - you can see what just happened as a result. Instead his public, and private, statements should have been "We do not disclose - confirm or deny - any users who may or may not use Blind, their affiliations or locations.")

In point of fact I do agree with sharing this news, however it should be presented disclosing as little information about employees as possible. Plus the app isn't doing a very good job if its traffic is easily distinguishable from other apps' traffic (technically making it possible for Uber to take the actions we've just read about, or directly monitor based on telephone MAC addresses, the exact employees using the app and the timing of their doing so).

But there's not so much that can be done about that. However, revealing the number of users at a company is not information that should be given out, in my opinion.

2 comments

This really stood out to me as well. A company that, say, runs a non-anonymous social network for businesses shouldn't give out numbers like that (at least, not without their customers' permission)... a company running a supposedly-anonymous place for employees to chat giving out that info is a serious breach of trust. I was curious about Blind (though certainly not curious enough to give it my LinkedIn credentials), but after reading that line, I wouldn't even remotely consider using this product.
What if Alex was bluffing? An average Uber employee reading this would think that some massive congregation of his/her peers is happening on Blind and would rush to install it.
Very interesting, though as an officer I'm not sure if he's allowed to make specific numerical misstatements like that. :)