Way to get out of it? Lawyers
Why are people afraid? Lawyers
Lawyers can get very expensive, and don't have a guaranteed result. Also a company Vs an individual usually has disproportionate funds for legal fees
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
27 points (100.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
47044 readers
693 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
It’s meant to be scary. I really think a lot of ndas are abused exactly because they are scary. The problem is they are expensive and uncertain.
Their validity is by state and enforcement is through the courts. Is a specific nda enforceable in your state? Is the other party likely to enforce it legally? Can you afford to defend yourself?
Don’t get me wrong,there are also many legit and enforceable ndas, which makes things complicated
NDAs are very state-specific, and need specific language about length and scope, and a good lawyer can usually pick them apart in court. But that's expensive, so it's better to not be in that position in the first place.
It would depend on the working of the NDA.
Just a casual reminder that NDA cover lawful activity. If you have a NDA and something illegal happens within the scope of the NDA it will not protect you from the law. Also, they do not block you from reporting illegal stuff.
Lets say some nurse somewhere is working in the state the measels outbreak came from in the US and was told to sign an NDA about the shit she sees daily. Asking for a friend.
If the shit she sees is legal, she has to keep quiet. If this shit is illegal, ie., trafficking of some sort, embezzlement, abuse, theft, fraud, assault, etc. then she can (and should) speak up.
Not a lawyer, but iirc, if the NDA aids in the concealment of a crime, I don’t think you’re actually bound by it, as that would essentially make you an accessory to said crime. But please do ask a professional about the whole context.
It depends on the wording of the NDA. Get a lawyer to verify.
In an ideal world NDA cover trade secrets or operational procedures
All NDAs and all states (in both US and international meaning) are different so you will need a lawyer to tell what you can and can not do. Lawyers are expensive so you'll have to be really keen on breaking the NDA to even figure out the consequences of doing so.
It is never a good idea to put yourself in a position where you have legal liability and could be sued. Damages and even just the cost of hiring a lawyer could bankrupt you.
So, you signed a legally-binding Non-Disclosure Agreement and now you wish to disclose something in it?
You might think you can do it anonymously, but they may have a way of tracing the leak back to you. One thing Apple does and has done is put people on bogus projects that will never see light of day. Report on the Apple game system, the Apple scale, and the Apple running shoes, they can narrow that leak down to you, or you and a couple other people, and drop you (since you weren't doing anything for them anyway). Stupid examples but you get the point.
There's also the canary system, a spy/counterspy method mentioned by Tom Clancy in his Jack Ryan books. I don't know if it's real, or if the CIA, Mossad, KGB, or any other intelligence agency actually uses it. The idea is, you tell three friends the same secret, but you change up the details each time and you keep track of who was told what version of the lie. When the lie comes back to you, you know who betrayed you because of the detail only one of them got (the canary that sang).
(If canary is familiar, you may have also heard the term "warrant canary." This is a case where someone, say a VPN provider, will put a line of text on their site that says "We have never been asked to provide records on our customers." Once they get, and are forced to comply with such a request, they remove the line, and people watching it know what's up. Same concept, actually.)
So like the last person to reply said, it's not a good idea. Even if you're anonymous, you may spill something linked directly to you, and they know you leaked it and can prove it in court.
I beta tested and signed an NDA about a video game that's been out for over 10 years now. I still don't talk about the beta test. I've played the commercially released game. I don't like it. I've shared my opinion on those experiences. Only ever told my wife about the beta test. But even so, there was nothing really worth mentioning in the beta test. It was just a little more boring than the commercial version, because they added more shit to do. It's still a turd, it just now has a couple chocolate sprinkles on it. Or, it's still a pig, but now it has lipstick on it.
IANAL obviously, but a game beta seems like the perfect legitimate use case for an nda. It’s time limited, very specific, you have legitimately volunteered.
NDAs are all different but ask yourself
- is this nda limited to a specific time period or is it indefinite?
- is it very specific to what it covers or generic enough that it say, prevents you from working? -was it a legitimate choice or mandated but an unequal power such as your employer?
If you have any such questions, you should definitely consult a lawyer before assuming
Need to know what country and state. Generally reporting a crime to the police is protected by the common law defence of necessity.