The Non-Disclosure Agreement, or NDA , is a tried and true method for keeping a secret.
Hollywood, corporations, political groups and even everyday people all use NDA’s to prevent the spreading of information they don’t necessarily want out in public purview.
The trick, though, is NDA’s have expiration dates.
Redditor SkullLikesCreepiness just had to ask:
“People with expired non-disclosure-agreements, what’s the juicy info you can now tell us?”
The diamond in the rough?
“I signed an NDA after discovering that the diamond ring I dropped off at a very famous jeweler had the diamond removed and replaced with a junk version.”
“How did I know this? My father-in-law is a retired jeweler and he picked up the ring after sizing for me.”
“He knew the stone wasn’t the same and he immediately challenged the store manager and got a copy of the appraisal certificate.”
“Many apologies, a diamond worth significantly more than mine and an NDA later, all was remedied.”
“Moral of the story, always check the stones in your rings or other jewelry when it is returned from the jeweler for sizing etc.“~TinktheChi
The bark AND the bite.
“I walk dogs ..I’ll repeat this: I’m a dog walker- and I have signed three NDA this year.”
“It’s amazing what people want to protect.”~Quiavonna
Get them while they’re young!
“That the charter school I taught for was, in reality, a Scientologist school.”
“We had to do training in Scientology after school for two hours a day.”
“We had to sign an NDA to get our $1000 ‘bonus’ for doing the non-elective training.”
“Those parents had no idea the school was Scientology.”
“We did not teach them how to be Scientologists, but we certainly used the terminology and ol L. Ron’s ideas.”
“This was about 25 years ago before we knew much about Scientology.”
“I didn’t buy in and I wasn’t invited back the following year.”
“The school dissolved about 4 years later.”~momo871
It’s not who you know, it’s what you know.
“If you have a comcast voice remote and you say, ‘Make Robert Happy.’ It will turn the TV to Doctor Who.”
“There used to be a lot of hidden voice commands in the system.”
“We had to take a lot of them out over time, but that one is still in there.”
“Edit: A couple people have asked me who Robert is.”
“He is one of the software engineers working on the voice remote system.”
“As a proof of concept early on he put that in, and just never removed it.”
“Edit 2: Some people are asking for another one. If you say ‘Big Boss’ it’ll make your TV go to an empty page left over for the Minions movie and make your tv play a minion noise.”
“It seems they removed a lot of them, but that one is still there too.”~Baron_Greyfallow
The Trees know things…
“Had to sign an NDA in order to reforest an artillery range that was last active in the 1920’s, just in case we found some high-tech military secrets from 90 years ago.”~Synched2020
Behold the roar of the tiger!
“TigerDirect was once a pretty successful computer hardware store in North America.”
“There was a whole sh*tstorm of reasons why their brick and mortar stores collapsed quite quickly.”
“Some of that information is public.”
“However, I know they were being sued for shamelessly trying to force their clients’ to buy an antivirus software that was in fact just a well-dressed virus.”
“It dramatically impacted system performance, it didn’t really do anything more than Defender, it was alarmingly expensive and ultimately didn’t actually work without paying a ton of additional fees.”
“More worryingly, once your credit card information was recorded it continued to charge you even if you canceled the subscription, and your fees were astronomically higher after a few months.”
“And it was notoriously a problem to remove.”
“Calling their helpline for help only resulted in their agents refusing to help you unless you gave them your credit card info and more money. So;”
“Want to use the software? Gonna be more money.”
“Want help using the software? More money.”
“Want to stop using the software? More money.”
“Already giving them money? More money it is then.”
“Employees who questioned this software were terminated.”
“They were forced to sell it and fired if they did not sell a substantial amount.”
“It went so far that the stores stopped carrying any other antivirus just to prevent sales of anything but.”
“Couple this with illegal firing practices, with the company considering reselling computers abandoned at their tech bench back to new people, some employment violations…”
“And that’s just the stuff I know about.”
“There’s more, but I wasn’t privy to it all.”
“They like to cite the decline of brick and mortar stores and the success of their online store, but I haven’t seen any other brick and mortar stores for competition closing (actually the opposite!).”
“And focusing all your eggs on the, ‘let’s compete with NewEgg’ basket doesn’t seem wise either.”
“I am almost certain their collapse was due to overwhelming lawsuits and or an attempt to avoid more by almost dissolving, but like I said, I know only of the lawsuits and violations that happened in my district, not necessarily the whole chain.”~TheNorthernNoble
Of course, secrets often do more harm than good.
“I was given a near fatal overdose of Tylenol as a toddler at a daycare called la petite.”
“The young worker walked away when I was on a diaper changing table when I rolled over and fell off.”
“I ended up breaking my femur and was understandably wailing my little cubby head off.”
“She was afraid to get fired so she kept feeding me painkillers until I stopped crying.”
“Turns out that’s a bad thing.”
“Well safe to say I spent over a week in the hospital and some time in a full-body cast.”
“My legs grow got stunted just enough to make my legs just a bit shorter than my torso in portion.”
“Medical bills were paid and I got 25,000 dollars in an annuity.”
“Plus the girl got fired but not prosecuted.”
“My parents refused to press charges on her cause they believe in second chances and forgiveness.”~Hobbit893
Spelling is hard.
“The State of Oklahoma once busted a counterfeit check ring because the individuals misspelled Oklahoma on the front of some checks.”
“They were damn near perfect copies with valid account, check and amount numbers and were caught when an employee who ran a reader/sorter machine noticed a rejected check with the spelling Oaklahoma.”
“I was that employee and had to testify in court regarding finding the checks.”
“I think I’m still not supposed to talk about certain details, even though it was a long time ago.”~JustGimmeAnyOldName
NDA smash?
“Into the Spiderverse was originally planned to be SpiderMan vs Hulk”~kidzordon
It’s all in the name.
“Mercedes actually uses Renault engines on most of their smaller cars”~Jertzuu
NDA or not, secrets have a way of finding their way out into the public.
While not all of these secrets were terrible, it is nice to know that RDJ is a good person.