I’d love to see high school students spending less time preparing for standardized tests and more time trying to solve interesting problems. Here’s one.
You’re in charge of the homecoming committee and you’ve just learned that hackers have stolen the names, email addresses, and credit card information of 160 families who used the website you set up to sell tickets. But the unknown hackers promise to delete all the personal information if you just pay them $50.
What do you do?
If you tell the affected families, you’ve just created a huge headache for yourself and for everyone affected that might have never materialized had you paid the $50.
If you keep it a secret and pay the $50, the hackers might use the information anyway. And there’s still that chance that someone could find out and leak the secret.
What are you going to do?
This is the dilemma Uber faced recently. And while Uber may be a large company, that decision came down to a small room of individuals who had a choice. We know how their choice worked out for them.
What would you have done if you were in the room?