I Did Consulting Work For A Major Streaming Service — What Happened?
It is my dream to have a ‘working relationship’ with companies and tell them “This is great, I especially like x,y, and z.” or “Err on the side of caution when doing this — It could be misinterpreted.”
So when a certain company said “Do that, for us, for a few days.” I said “Happy to help.”
“And we’ll pay you!”
“Even happier to help!”
I will not give specifics on information gathered and shared beyond “habits”, as I signed an NDA. However, the project-leader did give me permission to refer to them as ‘major streaming service’.
But that does not stop me from dropping the following in conversation —
“Hey, I consulted for … someone… for 🌟10 Days🌟!”
This is about my experience — And I’m happy to say it was pleasant.
I reported my habits each day for about 2 weeks. Over that time, you get fairly intimate knowledge about the platform, it’s positives and annoyances.
No one was ever peeved that I brought up areas of improvement — The project-runners were clearly people who valued our insight, and I see some suggestions I made are beginning to be rolled out on the platform.
It opened up a new world of work — Doing short, temporary projects where I give my opinion, fixes, and suggestions for a product. I work at my own time and pace, and $/hr ends up being around 50$/hr, using my own tricks to work efficiently.
It beats the rat race.
Like many, my e-mail account was part of a breach. Again. Also, like many, I use the same e-mail for various services. I log into this service on multiple devices.
During the latest breach my e-mail was part of (that was rumored to have taken place in around late 2017 and just announced), I found my account compromised.
Luckily, I haven’t used the upper tier features for a few years, and had since removed my saved payment methods.
Still…someone in a region of the world was in my account. As of Summer 2020 the service has returned to several of those countries, so I hope the person got their own account soon.
I know, in reality, someone probably paid 5 Bitcoin for a list of login credentials found in a breach, created a script to insert them with their accompanying passwords into a login screen.
The real lesson is; Get a password manager to manage complicated passwords — Which I have.
I e-mailed the company support and quickly got a genuine response, asking for devices I use, location, and other data about habits. Within 1 hour, my account was restored to me, password reset.
Easily the quickest a problem has been resolved through any medium.
Original post here, edited for clarity for Medium.
