Comments on: The Mysterious Hacking Charges Against Groupon

By: simon p

simon p — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 01:28:52 +0000

Live email content is a possibility, as LA points out. Additionally, from llooking at the actual court filing its pretty clear that the ‘contract’ is just within the email itself (as opposed to an attached document).

Any email can be changed on disk. I run several mail servers, and editing any read message is as easy as ‘vi /home/username/mail/emailaddress/cur/‘ . If I can gain access to a mail server, either as ‘root’ user or the username of the mail folder, I can easily change the content of a particular email after it has been read. That is nothing new, but it would be highly surprising to see a large company doing that, hence I really do wonder if, like LA proposes, the email contains ‘live’ elements.

It would be interesting to see how an email with live elements could be accepted as a contract. To give an analogy, imagine you sign a 7 page contract. Pages 1 through 6 contain the contract wording and page 7 is a blank page for signatures. You and the other party then sign page 7 and they only give you a a copy of page 7. Then the other party replaces pages 1 through 6 with something different and claim it was the same all along.

By: LA

LA — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:16:36 +0000

http://efreedom.com/Question/1-5448512/Live-Email-Content

By: Jeff Roberts

Jeff Roberts — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 18:25:54 +0000

Fair: I’m aware of technologies that provide notice when an email is read, prevent forwarding and so on, so I will take your word that an email can be altered after it is sent.

But there is still the larger question of whether Groupon would actually do this. It seems like a pretty big risk for a major company to undertake for relatively little gain. As for the rogue employee theory, this also seems unlikely because it is hard to imagine the average sales person having both advanced computing skills and the familiarity with legalese to draft a paragraph of boilerplate. (And, again, any prospective gain from doing so doesn’t seem to merit the risk and effort).

As for whether I’m paid by Groupon, take a look previous reporting on the company and decide for yourself (it might be helpful to know, for instance, that I broke the story about the employee class action).

By: Gimme a Break

Gimme a Break — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:41:15 +0000

sorry. i was grasping for straws. pitiful and unprofessional. legal complaint listed here uses upper case when mentioning defendant and plaintiff. i’m such a shit head. anyone available for bourbon shots?

By: Guest

Guest — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:21:50 +0000

Yeah, not many people try to defend anonymous company whose name they probably hear for the first time. This person’s camouflage is very lame and because he/she is very stupid too, I suspect he and his company are going to get played by Groupon big time. Not that I’m Groupon’s biggest fan.

By: Gimme a Break

Gimme a Break — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 15:06:42 +0000

Anyone can tell that you’re the same idiot that sent the tip, stop trying to act like you’re a different person. Not that your information is incorrect, but seriously, stop insulting our intelligence. I think you’re from the plaintiff’s company, trying to both defend and get press for yourself. So transparent. From the fake foreign accent in the “tipster” post, to your fake “Oh I’m just a regular person” comment above, lol. The fact that both you and the “tipster” capitalize “plaintiff” and “defendant” is such a great tell. Learn proper grammar. Neither of those words are to be capitalized. I can’t imagine two separate people and the only two people whose text appears on this page, out of the billions that use the internet, are making the same hideous grammar mistake.

By: Fair

Fair — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 17:55:05 +0000

I am an email/collaboration expert with Symantec (Enterprise Vault business line). Your alleged tipster is correct on the email changing strategies & technology. Most people don’t know emails can be changed after a person receives it. They most surely can be remotely & secretly changed after it arrives in the recipient’s inbox, and at a later date. Defendant’s motive could have been to cover their tracks with Plaintiff’s contract specifically, or all merchant contracts they agreed to via the email versions, as a result of a conflict that arose and Defendant wanted to cover their ass, and/or reduce exposure to future risk.

Defendant sends out tens of millions of emails each day worldwide; nobody can be completely clean 100% of the time. Obviously, Defendant doesn’t oversee their employees very well, or there wouldn’t be so many lawsuits against them. Defendant’s own employees are suing them. However, I don’t think Defendant as a company would have done or mandated this; rogue employees of the Defendant would have though. Defendant is responsible for their employees actions if they are acting on the company’s behalf. Plaintiff can easily find existing or former employees of Defendant to see if this was standard practice, or not. I bet they can!

By the way. I checked the Plaintiff (BidMyCrib.com) using Google. They have many good reviews, and an “A” rating with the Better Business Bureau. Since 2007 Plaintiff has only had 4 complaints. All 4 complaints appear to have occurred after their relationship with Defendant, so maybe there is a lot more to this story than what you’re reporting. I also checked to see if they have had any type of lawsuits against them; I found no lawsuits against Plaintiff (BidMyCrib LLC or BidMyCrib.com).

Why didn’t you mention the good reviews, too? For me to become a loyal follower of your website and your articles you need to provide fair and balanced reporting. You appear to be biased. Does Groupon and others pay you?