HP Pays California $14.5 Million For Pretexting… But Will Use The Money To Fight Piracy?

from the say-what? dept

So the press is all abuzz with the news that HP has settled the civil suit filed against it for its little pretexting adventure. They’re paying $14.5 million to the state in exchange for no civil suit from the Attorney General’s office. The company still could face other charges, including from the federal government, but we’ll see. Still, there’s a very odd part to the settlement. Most of the money will go to a fund to help California fight intellectual property violations. Technically the fund is for both that and privacy issues, called the “Privacy and Piracy Fund.” We can understand the privacy part — since that’s what HP violated — but we’re still scratching our heads over the piracy part. What do intellectual property violations (which, again, aren’t really “piracy”) have to do with the fact that HP used social engineering fraud tactics to spy on a whole bunch of people both inside and outside the company?


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Comments on “HP Pays California $14.5 Million For Pretexting… But Will Use The Money To Fight Piracy?”

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6 Comments
nedu says:

Part of a pattern

Remember last week’s news?

MPAA Kills Anti-Pretexting Bill (Dec 1, 2006):

A tough California bill that would have prohibited companies and individuals from using deceptive “pretexting” ruses to steal private information about consumers was killed after determined lobbying by the motion picture industry, Wired News has learned.

This looks like the same pattern.

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