Many of you following Apple have heard of this gentleman named Jon Prosser who has a YouTube channel called Front Page Tech. His channel for many years have been essentially a comedy tech news channel. He seems like a nice guy. But lately, his channel has gotten very serious because it looks like Apple employees are leaking to Prosser various secret products. For example, recently he leaked that Apple has glasses coming out at the end of the year or in 2021 and he claims he has seen the glasses and knows the price, around $500. See this episode. Earlier, about one month ago, he leaked the iPhone SE coming out. See this episode.
I have listened to him on various podcasts he has been a guest on. First, I heard him on iMore’s podcast here. iMore podcast April 26, 2020. On the iMore podcast he goes on at length at how he gets his information from sources at Apple. He basically admitted he is getting the information straight from Apple employees who are leaking to him. But it also looks like he is inducing the employees to leak to him. For example, on the iMore podcast, he admits that he asked the Apple employee to let him get a picture of the product. See this part of the podcast
I heard Prosser today also on the CultofMac podcast cast. See the CultCast’s May 21, 2020 episode. Prosser seem like a nice guy. He is also somewhat young. He mentioned before he built up his YouTube channel (he has about 247,000 subscribers) he used to work for Chris Pirillo, a longtime character on the Internet. Prosser mentioned on the CultCast podcast that he had a really hard childhood as is parents died when he was young. He also joked about being worried about Apple coming after him.
Frankly, I am worried about Prosser. I think he is over his head. On the podcasts he sounds like he is inducing Apple employees to leak confidential information to him. This could be a problem for him. Inducing an employe to breach a company’s trade secret could be deemed a misappropriation of a company’s secret and thus illegal. Prosser openly states on the podcasts he appears on that he assures the Apple employees he is getting leaks from that he will work to keep their identity confidential. On the iMore podcast he admits that he is telling his sources what he would like to get from Apple’s confidential information.
Many years ago there was another young tech person who got secrets from Apple’s employees. The website was called ThinkSecret.com and the owner of the site was a young tech person named Nick Ciarelli (aka Nick DePlume). Apple sued him and his site and in 2007 he settled and that website has been vacant since then. See Digital Media Law.
What Prosser has to be careful of is that Apple could sue him for inducing employees to violate the confidential agreement. Just getting sued by Apple could be incredibly expensive. And Prosser seems to be baiting Apple on his videos and podcast appearance. He knows that Apple is trying to find who is leaking to him. I feel that I am seeing a slow automobile accident happening right in front of me. I feel bad for the Apple employees who are leaking and for Prosser. I don’t think they know what they are dealing with here. Apple has a large legal department and it hires some of the top law firms. If Apple feels that Prosser is inducing its employees to leak, I could see Apple suing Prosser. Apple eventually will also find the employees who are leaking to Prosser.
My advice for Prosser is to be very careful and not do anything that looks like he is inducing leaks to him.
