Three years ago Brian Hogan was part of one of the biggest leaks about an Apple product. He came across an iPhone 4 while at a bar. He tells the how the event took place and some of the repercussions of the discovery in a post at Reddit AMA.
In the post Brian talks about how he found the iPhone 4, what his plans was for it and some of the headaches that came along with leaking the iPhone 4 to the public.
Here is the background:
“When I was 21 I was at a bar pretty late at night with 2 friends. After the last call both of my friends went to the bathroom, as they left a random drunk guy came out, walked up to me, picked up the phone on the bar stool next to me, and said don't forget your phone! I told him it wasn't mine and I didn't know who it belonged to. Random drunk guy hands me the phone and tasks me with finding its owner. I ask around and cant figure out who it belongs to, and after my friends returned we left and walked home having intentions of figuring out who the phone belonged to and giving it back.”
The next day Brian made some attempts to find the owner of the device.
“The next day I woke up and actually forgot that I had the phone at first, then went about trying to figure out who it belonged to. I checked Craigslist, then started looking at the actual phone for clues. First I noticed that the screen looked like it had a higher resolution than any iPhone I had seen, then that the case had plastic pieces/buttons in strange places. When I took the case off I found an iPhone with a flat back, flat edges, and a forward facing camera. There were two bar code stickers on the back, and there were a series of x's instead of a serial number. I was very curious/excited at this point, but I had no idea what I had.”
Brian and his friend go on to try to make sense of what device they had in their possession.
“Long story short, my friend Sage and I decided the phone was an Apple product, we decided to test and see the leverage that something like that had. First Sage contacted Apple to tell them that we think we might have it, and after they blew him off he started contacting different tech blogs to see if they wanted to meet in person and look at the phone (for money). The people at Gizmodo took us seriously, we met, and, they thought it was real too. About a month after that first meeting Gizmodo posted the article leaking the phone. There's obviously a lot more to the story but I'll get into the detail in my responses. I rarely talk about topic with people, but my conscience is clear, I'm over the embarrassment, and life's too short for some of the guilt I was placing upon myself about it.”
That’s the initial post over at Reddit, but Brian is responding to any questions anyone has in the comments thread. So this is your chance to ask away and interact with a guy who leaked one of the biggest stories in Apple history.
In the comments Brian shares about some of the consequences of the whole ordeal. The $5k offered by Gizmodo and $3k offered by Apple would hardly cover the court costs, lawyer fees and other charges that came with the package. So after all, was it worth it? What would you do if you discovered such a device before anyone was supposed to know about it?
Source: Reddit AMA
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