[mathattack]

Part of the question here is also, "What did you promise (implicitly or explicitly) when you got those email addresses?" That's really where it becomes an ethics issue. Our data gets sold every day.

Another question is, "Did everyone get paid?" He did the right thing and saw to it that everyone got made whole. If the business goes into bankruptcy and some creditors are not being made whole, it's much harder to not sell the email list if you can do so legally.

It's during tough times that you see what people's ethics really are. Great job by the OP addressing some of these.

[jaf12duke]

OP here.

I can't remember what the exact figure was--but it was in the 5 figures. Which for me felt like a potential life-saver.

I don't think what I promised my users was actually that relevant. It would've been super easy to change our terms of service to include the ability to sell or rent user data. I could have written it in a way no one would have understand. Of course, no one would have ever seen the change anyways.

The real issue was that I knew it was wrong. Even if legal.

[Causalien]

In this situation. Do you think your moral obligation to repay your debt outweight the moral obligation to your user's data?

Or compare this to the moral obligation to repay your investor vs that of the user's data.

[mathattack]

Exactly. Could you be open for a lawsuit if you didn't pay your creditors in order to respect the privacy of the email holders?

It's a very fine point, against the backdrop of a very good article.

[mathattack]

Thanks for sharing!