Sure, but what you’re describing is not what is being suggested. Responsible disclosure typically involves disclosing publicly after a reasonable period of time.
Why? Why should they be the responsible ones, when the well-funded, well-connected service provider is acting like the fly-by-night startup (that they probably started as)?
There's little public benefit in responsible disclosure here; all it would lead to is the whole thing being swept under the rug with some trivial "fix". There's lots of public benefit in immediate, wide disclosure - the scramble to fix this under pressure from vendors before potential abuse, and any real or imagined attempt at abuse, and subsequent lawsuits, would go far towards educating people and the industry about privacy, security, and bad business practice. It's a nice low real damage, high publicity case.
It's not like this stuff is new. But without serious pressure, the businesses will never learn and never stop making or enrolling into such systems.
Anyway, if it happened over here in the EU, I'd do the responsible disclosure thing and give a full, detailed advance expose to the local Data Protection Authority.
(And if I sound adversarial, then consider that neither the vendor developing such systems, nor the venues using them, are doing it in the interest of the customers.)
There's a big difference between announcing "I found all this private data" and "I found all this private data and here's exactly how I did it and here are the URLs". What the author has done is detail exactly how anyone else can abuse this system from anywhere in the world and also given them ideas about what to do with that information that would cause a direct cost to the company. I think that's irresponsible and unnecessary. You public disclosure rationale has some merit but it didn't require publishing the user manual for the attack. Just saying you used the API, publishing the amounts plus some proof of private data from people who have given consent would be enough to get the business scrambling.
This seems less like a "manual for attack" and more like tweeting that your local storage unit rental never puts locks on their garages and gates and "anyone could just walk in and out".
To expand your analogy can you see the difference between:
"A storage unit I know of never uses locks"
and
"The storage unit at 1234 Central Boulevard, San Andreas never uses locks, just wiggle the door a bit and it'll open."
I think most people would acknowledge there's a big difference.
That's not the same though at all.. A closer analogy would be publicly announcing that "Company managing the storage lockers 1234 Central Boulevard, San Andreas is keeping all of them unlocked without telling their customers".
Which would still be wrong but you're implying that the business is the victim here when it's the complete opposite.
Causing damage or cost to a company through fraudulent use would be the cornerstone of a civil or criminal prosecution. Cases where there is good disclosure and no cost incurred tend to get dismissed, cases where there is identifiable damages get stupidly big sentences and/or fines.
Right but would you afford the same opportunity to the healthcare provider? You'd contact them privately and expect them to go and learn why over prescription of antibiotics is a bad thing and change their ways? Of course you wouldn't. You'd go to someone who cares. In healthcare there are ways you can report it without naming and shaming publicly, but how could the author do that?
In the EU this would be illegal and (hopefully) lead to very high fines. So why would you try to help and conceal their criminal behaviour instead of reporting them?
Of course in other places, there aren't really any good options. So I guess the most "moral" approach would be to what you think would cause most financial damage to the business and discourage people from going there.
