Behind the Blog: Sensitive Sourcing and Job Application Hell

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss a sensitive data breach, the terrible process of sorting and sending job applications, and how Wikipedia is battling AI slop.

JOSEPH: Usually when I publish an article revealing a data breach, I don’t get all that many emails from readers. I imagine they read it and move on. There is a particular type of breach though where I often get inundated with emails: those that touch on sex or adultery.

That definitely applies to the piece I published this week called Hacked ‘AI Girlfriend’ Data Shows Prompts Describing Child Sexual Abuse (obviously this headline isn’t explicitly about sex or adultery, it’s about something much, much more concerning, but it does also discuss those themes, or at least it touches on sex). After that article, I’ve received more emails and texts than usual from people asking me to give them the data, or perform lookups for certain people inside.

One came from someone who claimed their boyfriend was one of the people whose info was included in the hack. “I wanted to ask if you know if there's any way I can access his info specifically? I don't want to know what others were searching on the website, so I don't need the full file. I just wanted to confirm if my boyfriend was using it for nefarious purposes. Do you have any advice on how I can get this info?”

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