{"id":52832,"date":"2026-08-04T14:58:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T18:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=52832"},"modified":"2026-08-04T15:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T19:00:07","slug":"apple-fires-engineer-who-kept-customer-device-ids-private","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/04\/apple-fires-engineer-who-kept-customer-device-ids-private\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Fires Engineer Who Kept Customer Device IDs Private"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ryan Merket<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>, PDF<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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The company said his performance was the reason, according to a lawsuit Boardman filed in San Francisco Superior Court. Boardman says that explanation was a pretext. His version of the story begins three years earlier, inside Apple’s technical relationship with the largest wireless carriers in the United States, with a category of data capable of identifying nearly every phone on the network.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Apple considered serial numbers and IMEIs personally identifiable information under its internal policies, Boardman alleges. Representatives working with carriers other than AT&T required the carrier to obtain a customer release before Apple supplied the data. The Apple representative assigned to AT&T did not enforce that requirement, according to the complaint. Boardman says the identifiers were then transmitted through “unsecured email communications.”<\/p>\n

He reported the practice to his manager and sought guidance from Apple’s legal department. He alleges that the company never gave him a written response.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

I don’t think he has much of a legal case. Apple was probably within its rights to fire him if what he refused to do was against company policy but not illegal. It doesn’t sound like Apple is disputing that, at least not yet.<\/p>\n\n

However, I think this is interesting because:<\/p>\n\n