Twitter Hack Sparking Security and Ethical Concerns

If you haven’t yet heard, the popular microblogging service Twitter was hacked. The hacker obtained access to the password of Twitter Co-founder Evan Williams’ email account, his wife’s email account, as well as the email accounts of other Twitter employees.

From there, the hacker, who calls himself, “Hacker Croll,” also accessed other accounts including PayPal and Amazon. As a result, the hacker stole confidential documents from Twitter, which include business ideas, financial projections, executive notes, and more. To make matters even worse, “Hacker Croll” then sent this information to TechCrunch, Mashable, and a French technology blog called Korben.

Mashable said it will not publish any of the documents, but despite the loud opposition from the online community, both TechCrunch and Korben have. Yesterday, TechCrunch published a series of executive meeting notes and promises to publish even more of the documents.

This incident has raised both security and ethical alarms. Are you now questioning if your private and corporate information is safe and secure? Should TechCrunch and Korben have published these documents? Do physical and digital ethics differ? How will this event impact Twitter going forward?