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This site’s new “No help for you” policy

Posted on February 18, 2022 by Dissent

From the “Yes-I’m-grumpy-but-you-earned-it Department:”

Over the years, mainstream journalists have reached out to me for information related to breach stories they were developing, and I generally tried to help them. In some cases, that might involve a few phone calls. In other cases, it might be an hour or more of my time on the phone or some phone calls and emails. And I wish I had a dollar for every time a reporter told me that they had no idea how to get to the dark web or that their editor wouldn’t let them go on the dark web and would I be willing to share some data with them?

In any event, in cases where it sounded like a chunk of my time would be needed or I had already been talking to the reporter for an hour to help them understand an incident, I have told the reporters that I was happy to help them but I expected them to link to my site or my reporting on the incident or somehow acknowledge the information on this site and the help they received. They all said they understood, and with one exception, they agreed to that.

Annoyingly, many of those who agreed that they would link to this site or this site’s original reporting and coverage broke their word. Their stories appeared and they never informed their readers that this site had previously covered what they were now reporting or had helped the reporter understand the issues, events, or what HIPAA and HITECH require.

©Guernica | Dreamstime

That failure to acknowledge the help and this site happened again recently. Let’s just call it the straw that broke this camel’s back.

This site has a new policy.

I’m done providing free help to paid journalists who just want to use me as a free source or resource without any credit. This does not apply to the regular infosec/data breach journalists because we have a mutually supportive relationship when it comes to sharing information or helping each other. This policy applies to paid reporters from news outlets because they just take and give nothing back to this site. They are now on their own unless they want to hire me to help them for a discounted rate of $350.00 per hour. Or they can go looking for others who may be willing to donate chunks of time to them for free.  I am no longer willing to.

This site doesn’t make any money but that doesn’t mean that I can just sit around spending hours helping others earn money for reporting while they don’t credit their sources.

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