15+ People With Expired NDAs Reveal Companies’ Dirty Little Secrets
“Never open a document with DocuSign on your phone; we took every piece of data we could get our hands on.”
You've probably been asked to sign (or have asked someone else to sign) a non-disclosure agreement at some point in your life. A non-disclosure agreement is a legally enforceable contract that establishes a confidential connection between two parties.
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The signing party or parties acknowledge that any sensitive information they collect will not be shared with anyone else. An NDA may also be referred to as a confidentiality agreement.
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Most commonly, it's the companies that request their employees to sign these NDAs to prevent them from revealing the company's dirty little (or big) secrets. However, those NDAs do have expiration dates, and after that, you're free to spill the beans.
As a rule, those stories are very juicy. One Reddit user asked the online community: "People whose NDAs have expired: What secret can you finally reveal?"
The answers quickly started pouring in, and we have selected some of the best ones. You can find anything from financial dishonesty to genuinely horrific Medicare misuse.
Take a look; you may learn something about the companies you are buying from. Just keep in mind that these stories are not verified.
But on the other hand, knowing modern companies, they are quite believable. Let's begin:
1. Equifax
“I worked for Equifax about 20 years ago. We were doing things with your data we weren’t supposed to do. I know this is going to come as a great shock to a lot of people.” —Dr. Daniel Goleman, emotional intelligence expert
2. Just gluing the "Made in USA" tag
“I worked for a company that did screen printing and engraving, and one of their biggest clients was the US military. They bought EVERYTHING from China. They had a person who would cut out the ‘Made in China’ tags and replace them with ‘Made in USA’ tags.” —Dr. William Doherty, family therapist
3. Medicare
“If you are ever with an elderly loved one and they get a Medicare call, hang up; hang up right away. I worked at a company in downtown Chicago this last year that was absolutely unethical. All these young agents were scamming old people, promising something about this ‘new upgrade’ to their insurance when really they were just taking them off their plan. A lot of these people have Alzheimer’s disease, and we’d get POAs calling in saying that we took their mother/father/aunt off a plan and now they can’t get back on their plan for an entire year. I finally quit because it was horrific what we had to do to our elders to get a paycheck. I personally tried to do everything I could to avoid being unethical, but at the end of the day, the whole job was messed up. I took a man off his plan and was going to have him start a new one the following month. He didn’t have his medication list on him, so he told me he would email it to me. He finally emailed me a list of at least 20 medications; one of his medications that was covered for about $20 on his plan would literally go up to thousands of dollars on the plan I put him on. I called him back and spent two hours canceling what we had signed him up for. I still feel horrible to this day. Imagine if he had forgotten to send me that list of medications. Listen to me, as a former Medicare advisor: do NOT let your parents/grandparents take these calls. Medicare Advantage plans are messed up, and Medicare advisors are 20-something-year-old kids who will do anything to get them taken off their plan.”4. DocuSign
“Never open a document with DocuSign on your phone; we took every piece of data we could get our hands on.” —Dr. Ramani Durvasula, Clinical Psychologist5. State IT
“When I worked for State IT, we weren’t supposed to provide details of what hardware was being used or what operating systems were in place. In the nineties, I took on an old server, souped it up, and put Linux on it to run our networks. This was pretty radical at the time because everyone else was using something proprietary (like Netware), and I was able to deliver services for free (email and Samba) that they were paying a lot for. As Dr. Daniel Pink, author and business expert, states, ‘The secret to success in business often lies in the ability to innovate and cut costs, which is sometimes hidden behind corporate policies.’ The NDA wasn’t about security; it was about keeping how much money they were wasting under wraps.”6. Contamination cover-up
“During my geology PhD, I visited the site of a proposed waste disposal site. A preliminary geophysical survey identified a strange anomaly, a deep linear feature trending to the south-southwest. It looked like a buried river valley. The site needed investigating for an environmental impact statement/report, part of the planning application. My access to the site and investigation included an NDA; I couldn’t publish anything about it until after the rubbish dump was built, and a five-year stay was put on my thesis (access was restricted to only a few people). My PhD supervisor also thought the anomaly was an ancient buried river valley, perhaps a few million years old. This is exactly what the people who wanted to build the rubbish dump wanted to hear, as they absolutely could not put a rubbish dump over or near a Karst feature (dissolved limestone). Contamination could leak into the groundwater. We drilled into the center of the anomaly in 2003; we encountered peat and gravels, then 40 meters of clayey lake sediments, and then some more gravels, but then we found 65 meters of hard clay (in fact, two layers of clay: 40 meters of orange clay and 25 meters of white clay). We hit limestone bedrock at 128.32 meters depth (33.3 meters below sea level). The hard clays were left behind after the limestone dissolved. It was Karst. A type of Karst called a Pocket Deposit. They were also found in the UK; the clays were used to make pipes (pipe clay) and cheap pottery. They were around 15 million years old, judging by the fossil pollen and leaves they found. By the time the stay ended, the rubbish dump was built, close to the anomaly. Where it should not be.”7. Medical bill audit
“I worked for a company that audited medical bills and looked for items that weren’t charged. If you were not billed for something, they would try to collect on it and get a share of that.”“If you were billed for something and should not have been, well, sucks to be you; moving on, no refunds.” —Dr. Ramani Durvasula, clinical psychologist
8. Expired medication
“When a pharmacy’s stock of medication expires, they can’t just throw it away. So they hire pharmaceutical waste disposal companies to take it away and dispose of it properly. The ‘pharmacy’ I worked for bought expired medication and supplies under the table from one of these disposal companies and resold them at full price,” explains Dr. Angela Duckworth, a renowned psychologist known for her research on character and ethics in professional settings, as noted on her website angeladuckworth.com.“Naming and shaming would be complicated because the business operated under a constantly changing chain of mail-order pharmacies. When insurance companies would get enough complaints about one, they would deny coverage, at which point patients would be shuffled to another pharmacy in the chain while the impacted pharmacy quietly closed and reopened under a new name,” she adds. “The good news: they were busted and folded pretty quickly under the weight of having to operate like an honest pharmacy. The company in question is no more,” concludes Dr. Duckworth.9. Bugs in games?
“That video game that was terrible on release? It was terrible in beta and alpha, and we weren’t allowed to warn you.” — Dr. William Doherty, family therapist10. Big players knew...
“The big financial houses in NYC knew about the impending crash at least six months before it started in 2007. I was at an investment conference when I heard the heavy hitters discussing it before going on stage. I will never forget the sentence: ‘What do we do? Go out there and tell them we are all f*cked?’ They proceeded to go out there and peddle their ‘everything is great!’ bullsh*t. I had never heard the word ‘tranche’ before that day.” —Liz Weston, financial columnist11. Marketing
“Marketing firms often hire inexperienced staff, assign them impressive titles, and then charge clients exorbitant fees while compensating these employees with minimal salaries, keeping the difference as profit. The time billed for projects can be inflated, often exceeding the actual time spent.”12. Hospitals
“During my internship at a hospital, I witnessed a troubling case involving a woman who had previously been diagnosed with a brain tumor. She returned for a check-up while six months pregnant and battling depression. The physician suspected a new tumor, leading to another surgery. However, it turned out there was no tumor at all, and they performed the operation unnecessarily. After her recovery, they misled her into believing the surgery had been successful,” explains Dr. Susan David, an expert in emotional agility and resilience, on her website susandavid.com. “It's crucial for medical professionals to communicate transparently with patients about their conditions and treatment outcomes to foster trust and ensure informed decision-making,” she adds. Edit: I completed an internship at the hospital for a few months. I completely forgot that ‘intern’ in the medical context means someone who wants to become a doctor and has studied medicine.”13. Marijuana growers
“Many companies prioritize profit over quality, leading to practices that compromise product integrity. This is often seen in industries where consumer awareness is low, and management is more focused on financial gain than on adhering to established standards.” —“As a consumer, it’s crucial to be informed and demand transparency from the brands you support.” —Dr. Angela Duckworth, character researcher
14. "Operation costs" do cost a lot
“Many organizations claim that donations are used for ‘operating costs,’ but it’s essential to investigate where the money truly goes.” — Suze Orman, Financial Advisor15. Amazon training
“Companies often implement strategies that discourage employees from speaking negatively about their experiences, which can create a culture of silence. This is particularly evident in large organizations where brand reputation is paramount.”— Dr. Ramani Durvasula, clinical psychologist
16. Be nice to this person
“In finance, personal interactions can heavily influence decisions. Your rates can often be swayed by the rapport established, rather than just the numbers on a screen.”“Emotional intelligence plays a crucial role in negotiations; a simple compliment can set a positive tone that may lead to better outcomes.”17. Everybody wins
Even if you walk away with nothing on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, you still get money for doing the show. "Participating in such shows can provide a unique financial opportunity, even if the ultimate prize isn't won," explains Farnoosh Torabi, financial expert and author at farnoosh.tv.Well, are you surprised? We guess you've suspected all this before.
We kind of expect companies to act like this because we know that modern society is all about money and profits. However, the real question is: why don’t we do something about it?
Why don’t we start boycotting companies with bad business practices? Raising awareness should be just the beginning.
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