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Google engineer fired for violating privacy policies

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 15 Sep 2010 4:28 User comments (7)

Google engineer fired for violating privacy policies Google has confirmed this week that they have fired David Barksdale, an engineer who was accused of accessing Gmail and Google Voice accounts of minors and then using the information from chat logs and emails.
Barksdale was a site reliability engineer, a position which granted him access to user accounts.

The dismissed employee accessed the accounts of teenagers he met at a local technology group, then taunted them with information he uncovered.

Google fired Barksdale in July, after receiving multiple complaints from the parents of a few of the teenagers.

"We dismissed David Barksdale for breaking Google's strict internal privacy policies,"
said Bill Coughran, senior vice president of engineering at Google (via PCM). "We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our systems, and we regularly upgrade our security controls--for example, we are significantly increasing the amount of time we spend auditing our logs to ensure those controls are effective. That said, a limited number of people will always need to access these systems if we are to operate them properly--which is why we take any breach so seriously."

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7 user comments

115.9.2010 18:19

Good, criminal charges should be laid against him too for at the very least invasion of privacy and possibly attempt of blackmail.

215.9.2010 18:24

Got what he deserved. I agree with Mysttic.

315.9.2010 23:26

he prolly had an awesome salary. what a moron.

416.9.2010 08:42

And he was doing it just to mess with some kids? What a LOSER!

516.9.2010 15:00

I bet he was also the one to leak those google ad figures last week.

617.9.2010 05:00

when your in a position to access personal or classified information it should stay private.I"m the guy thats friends send to the atm with their bankcard and pin number to get money for them.yes i could easily draw out more money than they want and keep some but I don't want my reputation ruined.Honesty means a lot in a world with drugs/crime/war and all sorts of dodgy people.

717.9.2010 07:32

lol this guy is a PERVE

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