“What a Power Move” — Man Gets Job Interview Revenge With Company Who Let His Data Be Stolen

What lengths would you go through in order to right a wrong you suffered as a consumer? If you've ever been sold a faulty product by a company or felt like you weren't provided with the best service, maybe you brought it up with the business' client experience team.

Maybe you expressed your gripes and all they did was give you the runaround, never solving your issue and hoping you'll just leave a mean comment online and then go on with your life.

Well Kernel Dump (@kerneldump) network, systems, cloud, and security engineer who regularly posts to TikTok, doesn't roll like that.

He relays his story of revenge, and it all starts with a job interview.

"Put a finger down if you ever applied to a cyber security job and a few days later you get an email from the recruiter inviting you to a phone screener. The phone screener goes great, so they set you up with an interview with the hiring manager," he starts.

He continues with the recapitulation of his application/hiring experience with the company, stating, "You blow it out of the water with the hiring manager so then they start setting you up with interviews to meet the rest of the engineers on the team, engineers on other teams, and everything goes great."

This sounds like a perfect scenario for anyone looking for a new job, right? He's impressing the people in charge of hiring and is already getting to meet potential co-workers. Seems like an absolute win. But then he continues to talk about his experience: "And now you have an interview set up with the CISO [Chief Information Security Officer]."

Still keeping his hand up, Kernel goes on, "And you sit down with the CISO and the CISO says hey what interested you in this company and you say well, three months ago I got a dark web monitoring alert that an email, username, and virtual credit card number that I've only ever used on your website was found on the dark web."

If you're like me, then you're probably wishing you were in the room during that moment to see what the CISO's face looked like. He continues, "And after hours of trying to get a hold of customer service, using your web portal, and contacting your security email account, I got nowhere and so I thought the only way to get your attention would be to apply for this job."

Showcasing a John Wick-level of commitment and will, Kernel broke down that the reason why he applied for a position was to get an answer from a high-ranking employee of the company about how his personal information ended up on the dark web. He went on, "And sit down with the CISO so that I could personally tell you that you have suffered a security breach."

"And you haven't notified your customers. Oh, and I'm not interested in the job," he then puts his finger down and then the video ends.

A number of folks who responded to his video seemed impressed by the level of commitment he displayed in alerting the company to their security breach.

One person who said that they worked as a CISO at their respective play of employment wrote: "As a CISO, I’d respect this so much. I’d still try to convince you to join the team because anyone willing to do that much is going to be great."

There was another TikTok user who said that Kernel's clip had the same energy as another person who ended up getting a job just so he could fix a bug in a product that was bothering him: "This is like that dude who got a job for an app company just so he could change something he didn't like and then quit lol."

The social media user seems to be referencing this X (formerly Twitter) post that was screenshot and shared to Reddit.

Another person who responded to Kernel's video was impressed by the dedication he displayed: "This man took the mic, the stand, the chair, the stage, and the building and dropped them all. What a move."

Other folks said that they appreciated the fact he went through all the different steps of an interview just to turn around and tell the folks there that he wasn't interested in the posting that they made, like this woman who wrote: "You’ve just done justice to millions of people who have fallen victim to companies wasting their time with 5+ rounds of interviews. Thank you."

This move that he pulled also came with another consequence for the business, according to another user, who penned: "Also because he now told him the company is liable for not reporting it."