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Hack Club has been handling children's data for 4 years without a privacy policy

https://kys.llc/blog/my-hackclub-story
49•alexkrchff•2h ago

Comments

3rodents•1h ago
Sounds like Hack Club is doing a great job at preparing teenagers for the real world: nobody cares about the things you care about as much as you do. The most important skill to learn for the real world is to pick your battles. Using ChatGPT for legal advice is dumb, but it’s not your battle to fight.
edent•1h ago
It absolutely is their battle to fight. This organisation appears to be exploiting them and their data.
Chabsff•1h ago
Agreed.

DEATH handing out swords to kids as Santa in the Hogfather is a funny joke, not an example to follow.

1a527dd5•1h ago
Not sure if it is just me, but the background animation absolutely kill my browser (Chrome) and scrolling is _super_ laggy.
GaryBluto•1h ago
I'm using a high-end ThinkPad for CAD and it's slowing down the page for me too.
PhilipRoman•1h ago
FWIW it's smooth on my $150 android shitbox.
NSPG911•1h ago
the animation is so useless and doesnt add anything to the actual post
udev4096•1h ago
I would highly suggest to block JS while you're only browsing. It loads fast, most trackers won't load and better security as most browser exploits leverage JS all the time
aavshr•1h ago
yes, had to use reader mode.
embedding-shape•1h ago
I have a RTX Pro 6000 as my main GPU currently, and this website pins it to ~40% utilization! Never seen a website do that before, some sort of kudos to the webmaster is deserved.

It still renders smoothly though and doesn't go above 40C so I guess it could have been worse.

pohuing•51m ago
40% might just mean nothing because your core is probably not running at full clock.
embedding-shape•46m ago
With that website open, runs at 2850 MHz to be specific, it normally idles at 400-500 MHz with ~20 processes (firefox, gnome-shell, alacritty, etc, etc) using the GPU
Elfener•1h ago
I had no performance problems on my Thinkpad T410.

Oh wait, it's because it is too old to have WebGL support so the background crashed and thus consumed no processing power.

tomalaci•1h ago
Companies should quickly realize that ChatGPT can go both ways - it can turn a "script-kiddie" into fully fledged hacker if vulnerabilities continue to be this sloppy. I am fairly certain that low-skill hacker sweatshops already heavily rely on LLMs to quickly exploit trivial vulnerabilities like these.

Like it or not but I feel like account logins, PII and payment stuff will have to be handled by central big orgs. Ideally, I would like that to be a competent open-source government service. For now it is big companies like Google that can shove its SSO around in accessible manner to other sites.

prodigycorp•1h ago
I'm usually the type to be annoyed at hn people who nitpick about articles but.. this is unreadable.
blenderob•54m ago
It's an article by a teenager. We weren't making any great websites as teenagers either. I remember websites with glaring contrast and moving marquees and blinks everywhere. At least the author here writes full words without abbreviating every word. So the author is already writing better than what I wrote as a teenager.

May I suggest you use reader mode to remove the annoying flashing background? If you can get past the annoying UX of the article, it has interesting stories about serious issues.

jstummbillig•1h ago
> so in july 2025, i discovered that neighbourhood was exposing thousands of users' full legal names through an unprotected API endpoint. literally anyone with a slack ID could access this data. no authentication, no nothing. just a URL parameter and boom, there's your real name.

> i sent formal breach notifications to security@hackclub.com and gdpr@hackclub.com on july 9th. radio silence. nothing. not even an automated "we've received your email" response.

> when i tried talking to HQ staff informally, the responses were... well, shocking doesn't quite cover it. the first intern told me that since hack club is US-based, they're "not held to GDPR," that if fined "nothing compels us to pay it," and that EU people "void your EU protections" by coming to the US.

What? How did we get from (allegedly) informing them about a security vulnerability to them responding "nothing compels us to pay it"? I feel like the author is not being quite as candid in their account as they should probably be.

contrarian1234•1h ago
It sounds like the author started off by telling them they're doing illegal stuff. It's unclear if it's actually illegal or not.. but they naturally got the other side defensive and tried to avoid the author

If instead they framed it in terms of "hey you guys are sharing stuff you probably didn't mean to" then the reaction would have likely been different

blenderob•1h ago
Wow! Just wow! Just as I think the situation cannot get any worse, the OP reveals even worse things going on. I know the UX of this blog and the lack of capitalization is going to turn many people off! But I urge you to power through and read the whole OP anyway.

Use reader mode, block Javascript or whatever it takes. Give the author a break. They're a teenager. What kind of websites were you making as a teenager? I'm sure one of those dark background websites with MARQUEEs and BLINKs with glaring contrast colors! So give them a break. Behind the annoying UX is an article about serious and appalling privacy and security issues.

Like read this:

> i raised this with chris, who's a full-time staff member (not a teenager), and he insisted that exposing physical addresses and sensitive info was "just a vuln" not a breach. said he's "never heard the term 'data breach' used that way" and... also relied on chatgpt instead of actual legal advice.

It's just mind boggling that a bonafide company has such appalling privacy and security lapses and they still remain arrogantly indignant about it making bold claims about laws they don't understand, why, because ChatGPT told them so? Cherry on top is they are employing teenagers to answer legal questions! Not kidding! Just read the OP! Unbelievable!

Benjamin_Dobell•1h ago
If they're ignoring GDPR because they're in the US, you can potentially flag these as COPPA violations. COPPA is serious stuff. Courts can fine over $50k for each violation, where each individual impacted can be considered a unique violation. COPPA applies to under 13s, I'm not sure if there are age restrictions in place to join Hack Club, but if there isn't even a privacy policy, I doubt age restrictions are properly enforced.
lefrogman•45m ago
Hack Club realized this, and now doesn’t allow anyone under the age of 13 to participate in its programs (COPPA doesn’t apply to people over 13).
ForHackernews•52m ago
> i discovered that neighbourhood was exposing thousands of users' full legal names through an unprotected API endpoint.

Headline really buries the lede: this is the issue, not some missing ToS boilerplate.

The map is not the territory, the security policy is not the security.

Benjamin_Dobell•47m ago
I'm not going to pretend this is an easy read. So wouldn't blame if you stopped early. However, there's a section title "the surveillance infrastructure (orpheus engine)" which claims that children's private information is being distributed to third-parties without consent.
aboringusername•49m ago
Who cares? I mean, obviously this author, but pointing out "GDPR this" and "GDPR that" isn't going to make a difference or move the needle. Many companies have given up on GDPR - I've made requests and had blanket refusals to provide data.

Report them, you say? Many DPC's such as the Irish DPC are very friendly in terms of their lax approach to the regulation, just ask Max Schrems, he's been at this for years. I think the EU and the regulators do not have resources to enforce the law, so whilst there are requirements to protect customer data, nothing bad happens if you don't. Just check the top of HN as I write this [1] "Checkout.com hacked, refuses ransom payment, donates to security labs". Will anyone be arrested, charged, fined, or otherwise penalized? Nope, not a chance. I 100% guarantee absolutely nothing will happen as a result of this article. GPT makes it so easy to capture user data these days and people will just willingly hand it over.

The truth is, you should be very careful what data you hand out, always. Use an alias, use privacy tools, always be weary and check if they have a privacy policy, check to see if it works (make a dummy account, do GDPR request, if no reply, be weary).

If they are not serious about privacy, stop, think and act accordingly. While it is a disgrace what these individuals have done, individuals need to take personal responsibility just as in a real world, would you trust a random stranger giving you pills? Hopefully not!

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45912698

PhilipRoman•33m ago
No idea why this was flagged. This is a really good article in terms of both form and content and I was very surprised to learn that the author is actually also a teenager.

I get it, some people dislike the appearance but c'mon, this is HN. If we can use vi(1) on a 80 column terminal, reading an html page is not an impossible task.

Agreed3750•29m ago
As someone who is part of the Hack Club community, I would urge caution before blindly trusting this account.

- This person has also used their access to attempt to extort the admins and their Airtable data, demanding a bounty payment for access they were previously given. - In her arguments about the program leads earning higher bounties, they had said that they both did bounties for Coinbase and Google, neither of which being non-profits - Many of her arguments are flawed in other ways.

Theo (yes the ffmpeg guy) also commented on it in a livestream, and I would just point to that:

> This feels really in the weeds of something we are not supposed to see externally. It is a lot of writing for what seems like clueless people doing backend

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Hack Club has been handling children's data for 4 years without a privacy policy

https://kys.llc/blog/my-hackclub-story
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