[noisy_boy]

The honeypot story seems so weird:

> So, to confirm Deel’s involvement, Rippling’s General Counsel sent a legal letter to Deel’s senior leadership identifying a recently established Slack channel called “d-defectors,” in which (the letter implied) Rippling employees were discussing information that Deel would find embarrassing if made public. In reality, the “d-defectors” channel was not used by Rippling employees and contained no discussions at all. ... Yet, just hours after Rippling sent the letter to Deel’s executives and counsel, Deel’s spy searched for and accessed the #d-defectors channel—proving beyond any doubt that Deel’s top leadership, or someone acting on their behalf, had fed the information on the #d-defectors channel to Deel’s spy inside Rippling.

I am sending legal letter to someone warning them that I have dirt on them AND am also mentioning where the dirt is. And that didn't ring any warning bells to Deel's management? Just wow, if true. If they are truly this incompetent, they have no business doing corporate espionage.

[pea]

This is hilariously similar to the ploy George Smiley gets Ricki Tarr to orchestrate from Paris in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

[jamestimmins]

It's a pretty classic canary trap/barium meal test, no? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap#Barium_meal_test

[x0x0]

They were already doing stuff that's squarely behavior for which the board will fire you (and plausibly criminal), so prudence already departed.

[refurb]

I don’t think the letter was “warning they have dirt on them”.

Presumably it was a letter on another topic say an accusation about Rippling poaching Deel’s employees.

Rippling’s legal counsel sends a letter back saying “we aren’t poaching, there are plenty of Deel employees are looking to leave based on posts to Twitter and Slack discussions such as those in the “d-defector” channel.”

[noisy_boy]

The "d-defactor" channel isn't a world-famous Slack channel - Deel didn't think twice about why this supposedly internal channel name was mentioned in the communication other than being a bait, while many other things were "redacted"?

[refurb]

The guy was doing a search of slack channel dozen of times per day for months and months.

He was clearly willing to take risks.

[jobs_throwaway]

People who resort to corporate espionage do not have the most sound judgement

[psd1]

I think you mean "sound values".

I suspect that criminality is correlated with stupidity, but that doesn't make all criminals stupid.

E.g. scammers based in non-extradition territories may be making a savvy career choice, if we ignore matters of conscience.

I have insufficient information to assess the level of risk, but I believe corporate espionage has been successful in the past (hello cold war, hello China).

These particular people may have dropped a bollock, but that doesn't mean that crime cannot pay.

[droopyEyelids]

*People who are caught

[noisy_boy]

I thought being smart was the core competency of being in the spying business :)

[someuser2345]

If you're smart about spying, you don't get stories published about it.

[ivraatiems]

It would be more about convincing others you're smart.