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Comment by creaghpatr | Hacker News Reader

I thought MoviePass was already deep in the red. What incentive do they or any company have to protect their data if they are imminently going bankrupt? I'm guessing cybersecurity is not their most pressing concern, although maybe it is now.

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Their customer database was probably the only asset of value they had.

The customers of that data were, and still are, other legitimate businesses. The security breach doesn't change that, so no reason to protect the database.

Is a list of people who like to pay less than face value for movie tickets valuable?

Yes. It's a list of price-sensitive consumers who historically respond well to perceived discounting.

General rule of thumb for spam email is 0.1% conv rate, so if you blasted this leak list then you'd have 150K sign ups.

What’s the marginal value of this kind of list though? Call me cynical but I would assume data of a similar type and quality is already readily available

None really. Keep in mind any list dumps you can easily find online have already been pillaged thoroughly.

There is an entire data broker industry that relies on selling lead/contact information, so if anything there is a value savings on the hack. I've seen high quality contact (and assoc. company) data sell anywhere from $3 to $120.

I also thought they went out of business already. Their parent company Helios and Matheson is a horrific penny stock ($0.0018) traded over the counter pink sheets.

I'm sure this was written/designed back when they were in the startup/growth phase and not going bankrupt. This is the cowboy startup attitude at fault and demonstrates why we should be wary of similar companies.

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