The press reports that Westjet has admitted to Internet espionage, apologized to Air Canada, and settled the lawsuit for a payment of $5.5 million to cover costs, and a $10 million donation to charity.

Its interesting that they made the admission and apology public – that’s often not done.

Seems that Westjet managers obtained Air Canada passwords and accessed internal Air Canada web sites. They found information to identify things like their most profitable flights.

I only know what has been in the press, but it illustrates some points.

Password protocols are important. Make sure access to sensitive material is properly controlled.

Just because you can access the system of a competitor or some other party, doesn’t mean you should. There is a huge difference between checking out a competitors public website to see what you can find about them, and entering into an area that they do not intend to be public and have tried to protect.

That thought is part of the bigger issue that surrounds new technology. For some reason, when something new comes along, people using it often forget to think about it in context. People often forget that just because you are able to do something, it doesn’t make it right to do it.

Its similar to bloggers who have been fired for revealing sensitive internal information on their blogs. They would never have put that information in a letter, but for some reason don’t think twice about using the new medium to do that.

Westjet learned an expensive lesson here – hopefully others will take notice.

Read an article from the London Free Press